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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 



HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 

AND THE 

ECONOMICS OF KARL MARX 
By BENEDETTO CROCE 



TRANSLATED BY C. M. MEREDITH 

With an Introduction by A. D. LINDSAY 
Fellow and Lecturer of Balliol College, Oxford 



IRew H>otfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1 9 14 



CONTENTS 

Introduction ...... ix 

CHAPTER I 

Concerning the Scientific Form of Historical 
Materialism 

1. Scope of essay ; Labriola's book implies 
that historical materialism is not a philosopy 
of history : Distinction between a philosophy of 
history and philosophising about history : Reason 
why two have been confused : Materialistic 
theory of History as stated by Labriola not an 
attempt to establish a law of history : This con- 
trasted with theories of monists, and teleologists : 
Engels' statement that it is a new method erron- 
eous : New content not new method . . 2 

2. Historical materialism a mass of new data of 
which historian becomes conscious : Does not 
state that history is nothing more than economic 
history, nor does it provide a theory of history : 
Is simply investigation of influence economic 
needs have exercised in history ; This view does 

not detract from its importance . . .12 

3. Questions as to relations between historical 
materialism and socialism : Only possible con- 
nection lies in special historical application : 
Bearing of historical materialism upon in- 
tellectual and moral truth : Throws light on 
influence of material conditions on their 
development, but does not demonstrate their 
relativity : Absolute morality a necessary postu- 
late of socialism . . . . • .21 

CHAPTER II 

Concerning Historical Materialism Viewed 
as a Science of Social Economics 
1 . Relation between Professor Stammler's book on 
historical materialism and Marxism : Distinction 



vi CONTENTS 

between pure economics and general historical 
economics : Socialism not dependent on abstract 
sociological theory: Stammler's classification of 
the social sciences : His definition of society : 
Of social economics : Of social teleology : 
Nature of Stammler's social science does not 
provide abstract sociology : Social economics 
must be either pure economics applied to society 
or a form of history ..... 

CHAPTER III 

Concerning the Interpretation and Criticism 
of Some Concepts of Marxism 

I. OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM IN MARx's l DAS KAPITAL ' 

Das Kapital an abstract investigation : His society 
is not this or that society : Treats only of 
capitalist society : Assumption of equivalence 
between value and labour ; Varying views about 
meaning of this law : Is a postulate or standard 
of comparison : Question as to value of this 
standard : Is not a moral ideal : Treats of 
economic society in so far as is a working 
society : Shows special way in which problem 
is solved in capitalist society : Marx's deductions 
from it ...... 

II. MARX'S PROBLEM AND PURE ECONOMICS (GENERAL 

ECONOMIC SCIENCE) 

Marxian economics not general economic science 
and labour-value not a general concept of value : 
Engels' rejection of general economic law : ab- 
stract concepts used by Marx are concepts of pure 
economics : relation of economic psychology to 
pure economics : pure economics does not destroy 
history or progress . . 

III. CONCERNING THE LIMITATION OF THE MATERIALISTIC 

THEORY OF HISTORY 

Historical materialism a canon of historical inter- 
pretation : Canon does not imply anticipation 
of results : Question as to how Marx and Engels 
understood it : Difficulty of ascertaining cor- 
rectly and method of doing so ; How Marxians 



CONTENTS vii 

understand it : Their metaphysical tendency : 
Instances of confusion of concepts in their 
writings : Historical materialism has not a special 
philosophy immanent within it . .77 

IV. OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN FACE OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

Socialism and free trade not scientific deductions : 
Obsolete metaphysics of old theory of free 
trade : Basis of modern free trade theories not 
strictly scientific though only possible one ; The 
desirable is not science nor the practicable ; 
Scientific law only applicable under certain 
conditions: Element of daring in all action . 93 

V. OF ETHICAL JUDGMENT IN FACE OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

Meaning of Marx's phrase the * impotence of 
morality ' and his remark that morality con- 
demns what has been condemned by history : 
Profundity of Marx's philosophy immaterial : 
Kant's position not surpassed . . . .106 

VI. CONCLUSION 

Recapitulation : 1 . Justification of Marxian 
economics as comparative sociological economics : 
2 . Historical materialism simply a canon of his- 
torical interpretation : 3. Marxian social pro- 
gramme not a pure science ; 4. Marxism 
neither intrinsically moral nor anti-moral . 115 

CHAPTER IV 

Recent Interpretations of the Marxian 
Theory of Value and Controversies Con- 
cerning Them 

I 

Labriola's criticism of method and conclusions of 
preceeding essays answered : His criticism 
merely destructive : Tendency of other thinkers 
to arrive at like conclusions . . . .120 

II 

Meaning of phrase crisis in Marxianism : Sorel's 
view of equivalence of value and labour mostly 
in agreement with view put forward above : 
An attempt to examine profits independently 



viii CONTENTS 

of theory of value ; Is not possible ; Surplus 
product same as surplus value . . • 1 3 l 

CHAPTER V 
A Criticism of the Marxian Law of the 
Fall in the Rate of Profits 
Interpretation here given assumes acceptance of 
Marx's main principles : Necessary decline in 
rate of profit on hypothesis of technical im- 
provement : Two successive stages confused by 
Marx : More accurately a decline in amount 
of profit : Marx assumes that would be an 
increase of capital ; Would be same capital and 
increase in rate of profits : Decline in rate of 
profits due to other reasons . . .142 

CHAPTER VI 
On the Economic Principle 

TWO LETTERS TO PROFESSOR V. PARETO 
I 

Need for more comprehensive definition of the 
economic principle : Reasons why the mechanical 
conception erroneous, economic fact capable of 
appraisement : Cannot be scale of values for 
particular action : Economic datum a fact of 
human activity : Distinction and connection 
between pleasure and choice ; Economic datum 
a fact of will : Knowledge a necessary pre- 
supposition of will : Distinction between technical 
and economic : Analogy of logic and aesthetic ; 
Complete definition of economic datum . 159 

II 

Disagreement (1) about method (2) postulates ; (1) 
Nothing arbitrary in economic method, analogy 
of classificatory sciences erroneous : (2) Meta- 
physical postulate that facts of human activity 
same as physical facts erroneous : Definition of 
practical activity in so far as admits of definition ; 
Moral and economic activity and approval : 
Economic and moral remorse : Economic scale 
of values . . . • . • 1 74- 

Index of Names 187 



INTRODUCTION 

The Essays in this volume, as will be apparent, 
have all of them had an occasional origin. They 
bear evident traces of particular controversy and 
contain much criticism of authors who are hardly, 
if at all, known in this country. Their author thought 
it worth while to collect them in one volume and 
it has been, 1 am sure, worth while to have them 
translated into English, because though written 
on different occasions and in different contro- 
versies they have all the same purpose. They 
are an attempt to make clear by philosophical 
criticism the real purpose and value of Marx's 
work. 

It is often said that it is the business of philo- 
sophy to examine and criticise the assumptions of 
the sciences and philosophy claims that in this 
work it is not an unnecessary meddler stepping 
in where it is not wanted. For time and again for 
want of philosophical criticism the sciences have 
overstepped their bounds and produced confusion 
and contradiction. The distinction between the 
proper spheres of science and history and moral 
judgment is not the work of either science or 
A ix 



x INTRODUCTION 

history or moral judgment but can only be ac- 
complished by philosophical reflection, and the 
philosopher will justify his work, if he can 
show the various contending parties that his dis- 
tinctions will disentangle the puzzles into which 
they have fallen and help them to understand one 
another. — — 

* The present state of the controversy about the 
value of the writings of Karl Marx obviously calls for 
some such work of disentangling. No honest student 
can deny that his work has been of great historic 
importance and it is hard to believe that a book 
like Das Kapital which has been the inspiration of 
a great movement can be nothing but a tissue of 
false reasoning as some of its critics have affirmed. 
The doctrine of the economic interpretation of 
history has revivified and influenced almost all 
modern historical research. In a great part of his 
analysis of the nature and natural development of 
a capitalist society Marx has shown himself a 
prophet of extraordinary insight. The more de- 
batable doctrine of the class war has at least shown 
the sterility of the earlier political theory which 
thought only in terms of the individual and his 
state. The wonderful vitality of the Marxian 
theory of labour value in spite of all the apparent 
refutations it has suffered at the hands of ortho- 
dox political economists is an insoluble puzzle if it 
had no more in it than the obvious fallacy which 
these refutations expose. Only a great book could 
become c the Bible of the working classes/ 



INTRODUCTION xi 

But the process of becoming a Bible is a fatal 
process. .No one can read much current Marxian 
literature or discuss politics or economics with 
those who style themselves orthodox Marxians 
without coming to the conclusion that the spirit of 
ecclesiastical dogmatism daily growing weaker in 
its own home has been transplanted into the 
religion of revolutionary socialism. Many of those 
whose eyes have been opened to the truth as ex- 
pounded by Marx seem to have been thereby 
granted that faith which is the faculty of believing 
what we should otherwise know to be untrue, and 
with them the economic interpretation of history 
is transformed into a metaphysical dogma of deter- 
ministic materialism. The philosopher naturally 
finds a stumbling-block in a doctrine which is pro- 
claimed but not argued. The historian however 
grateful he may be for the light which economic 
interpretation has given him, is up in arms against 
a theory which denies the individuality and unique- 
ness of history and reduces it to an automatic re- 
petition of abstract formulae. The politician when 
he is told of the universal nature of the class war 
points triumphantly to the fact that it is a war 
which those who should be the chief combatants 
are slow to recognise or we should not find the 
working classes more ready to vote for a Liberal 
or a Conservative than for a Socialist. The Socialist 
must on consideration become impatient with a 
doctrine that by its fatalistic determinism makes 
all effort unnecessary. If Socialism must come in- 



xii INTRODUCTION 

evitably by the automatic working out of economic 
law, why all this striving to bring it about ? The 
answer that political efforts can make no difference, 
but may bring about the revolution sooner, is too 
transparently inadequate a solution of the difficulty 
to deceive anyone for long. Lastly the economist 
can hardly tolerate a theory of value that seems to 
ignore entirely the law of supply and demand, and 
concludes with some justice that either the theory 
of labour value is nonsense or that Marx was talk- 
ing about something quite apart in its nature from 
the value which economics discusses. All these 
obj ectionsare continually beingmade to Marxianism, 
and are met by no adequate answer. And just as 
the sceptical lecturer of the street corner argues 
that a religion which can make men believe in the 
story of Balaam's ass must be as nonsensical as 
that story, so with as little justice the academic 
critic or the anti-socialist politician concludes that 
Socialism or at least Marxianism is a tissue of 
nonsensical statements if these ridiculous dogmas 
are its fruit. 

A disentangler of true and false in so-called 
Marxianism is obviously needed, and Senatore 
Croce is eminently fitted for the work. Much of 
the difficulty of Marx comes from his relation to 
Hegel. He was greatly influenced by and yet had 
reacted from Hegel's philosophy without making 
clear to others or possibly to himself what his final 
position in regard to Hegel really was. Senatore 
Croce is a Hegelian, but a critical one. His chief 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

criticism of Hegel is that his philosophy tends to 
obscure the individuality and uniqueness of history, 
and Croce seeks to avoid that obscurity by dis- 
tinguishing clearly the methods of history, or 
science and of philosophy. He holds that all science 
deals with abstractions, with what he has elsewhere 
called pseudo-concepts. These abstractions have no 
real existence, and it is fatal to confuse the system 
of abstraction which science builds up with the 
concrete living reality. C A11 scientific laws are 
abstract laws,' as he says in one of these essays, 
(III p. 57), c and there is no bridge over which 
to pass from the concrete to the abstract ; just 
because the abstract is not a reality but a form 
of thought, one of our, so to speak, abbreviated 
ways of thinking. And although a knowledge 
of the laws may light up our perception of 
reality, it cannot become that perception it- 
self.' 

The application to the doctrine of historic 
materialism is obvious. It calls attention to one of 
the factors of the historical process, the economic. 
This factor it quite rightly treats in abstraction and 
isolation. A knowledge of the laws of economic 
forces so obtained may ( light up our perception ' 
of the real historical process, but only darkness and 
confusion can result from mistaking the abstraction 
for reality and from the production of those a 
priori histories of the stages of civilisation or the 
development of the family which have discredited 
Marxianism in the eyes of historians. In the first 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

essay and the third part of the third Croce ex- 
plains this distinction between economic science 
and history and their proper relation to one another. 
The second essay reinforces the distinction by 
criticism of another attempt to construct a science 
which shall take the place of history. A science 
in the strict sense history is not and never can 
be. 

Once this is clearly understood it is possible to 
appreciate the services rendered to history by 
Marx. For Croce holds that economics is a real 
science. The economic factors in history can be 
isolated and treated by themselves. Without such 
isolated treatment they cannot be understood, and 
if they are not understood, our view of history is 
bound to be unnecessarily narrow and onesided. 
On the relative importance of the economic and the 
political and the religious factors in history he has 
nothing to say. There is no a priori answer to the 
question whether any school of writers has unduly 
diminished or exaggerated the importance of any 
one of these factors. Their importance has varied 
at different times, and can at any time only be 
estimated empirically. It remains a service of 
great value to have distinguished a factor of 
such importance which had been previously 
neglected. 

If then the economic factor in history should be 
isolated and treated separately, how is it to be 
distinguished? For it is essential to Croce's view 
of science that each science has its own concepts 



INTRODUCTION xv 

which can be distinguished clearly from those 
of other sciences. This question is discussed in 
Essay III Q. 5 and more specifically in Essay VI. 
Croce is specially anxious to distinguish between 
the spheres of economics and ethics. Much con- 
fusion has been caused in political economy in 
the past by the assumption that economics takes 
for granted that men behave egoistically, i.e. in an 
immoral way. As a result of this assumption men 
have had to choose between the condemnation of 
economics or of mankind. The believer in humanity 
has been full of denunciation of that monstrosity 
the economic man, while the thorough-going 
believer in economics has assumed that the success 
of the economic interpretation of history proves 
that men are always selfish. The only alternative 
view seemed to be the rather cynical compromise 
that though men were sometimes unselfish, their 
actions were so prevailingly selfish that for political 
purposes the unselfish actions might be ignored. 
Croce insists, and surely with justice, that economic 
actions are not moral or immoral, but in so far 
as they are economic, nonmoral. The moral 
worth of actions cannot be determined by their 
success or failure in giving men satisfaction. For 
there are some things in which men find satisfac- 
tion which they yet judge to be bad. We must 
distinguish therefore the moral question whether 
such and such an action is good or bad from the 
economic whether it is or is not useful, whether 
it is a way by which men get what they, rightly or 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

wrongly want. In economics then we are merely dis- 
cussing the efficiency or utility of actions. We can 
ask of any action whether it ought or ought not 
to be done at all. That is a moral question. We 
may also ask whether it is done competently or 
efficiently : that is an economic question. It might 
be contended that it is immoral to keep a public 
house, but it would also have to be allowed that 
the discussion of the most efficient way by keeping 
a public house was outside the scope of the moral 
enquiry. Mrs Weir of Hermiston was confusing 
economics with ethics when she answered Lord 
Braxfield's complaints of his ill-cooked dinner by 
saying that the cook was a very pious woman. 
Economic action according to Croce is the con- 
dition of moral action. If action has no economic 
value, it is merely aimless, but it may have economic 
value without being moral, and the consideration 
of economic value must therefore be independent 
of ethics. 

Marx, Croce holds.was an economist and not 
a moralist, and the moral judgments of socialists 
are not and cannot be derived from any scientific 
examination of economic processes. 

So much for criticisms of Marx or rather of 
exaggerated developments of Marxianism, which 
though just and important, are comparatively 
obvious. The most interesting part of Signor 
Croce's criticism is his interpretation of the shib- 
boleth of orthodox Marxians and the stumbling- 
block of economists, the Marxian theory of labour 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

value with its corollary of surplus value. Marx's 
exposition of the doctrine in Das Kapital is the 
extreme of abstract reasoning. Yet it is found in a 
book full of concrete descriptions of the evils of 
the factory system and of moral denunciation and 
satire. If Marx's theory be taken as an account of 
what determines the actual value of concrete things 
it is obviously untrue. The very use of the term 
surplus value is sufficient to show that it might be 
and sometimes is taken to be the value which 
commodities ought to have, but none can read 
Marx's arguments and think that he was concerned 
with a value which should but did not exist. He 
is clearly engaged on a scientific not a Utopian 
question. 

Croce attempts to find a solution by pointing 
out that the society which Marx is describing 
is not this or that actual society, but an ideal, 
in the sense of a hypothetical society, capitalist 
society as such. Marx has much to say of the 
development of capitalism in England, but he 
is not primarily concerned to give an industrial 
history of England or of any other existing society. 
He is a scientist and deals with abstractions or 
types and considers England only in so far as in it 
the characteristics of the abstract capitalist society 
are manifested. The capitalism which he is analysing 
does not exist because no society is completely 
capitalist. Further it is to be noticed that in his 
analysis of value Marx is dealing with objects only 
in so far as they are commodities produced by 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

labour. This is evident enough in his argument. 
The basis of his contention that all value is c con- 
gealed labour time ' is that all things which have 
economic value have in common only the fact that 
labour has been expended on them, and yet after- 
wards he admits that there are things in which no 
labour has been expended which yet have economic 
value. He seems to regard this as an incidental 
unimportant fact. Yet obviously it is a contradic- 
tion which vitiates his whole argument. If all things 
which have economic value have not had labour ex- 
pended on them, we must look elsewhere for their 
common characteristic. We should probably say 
that they all have in common the fact that they 
are desired and that there is not an unlimited 
supply, of them. The pure economist finds the key 
to this analysis of value in the consideration of the 
laws of supply and demand, which alone affect all 
things that have economic value, and finds little 
difficulty in refuting Marx's theory, on the basis 
which his investigation assumes. 

A consideration of Marx's own argument forces 
us therefore to the conclusion that either Marx 
was an incapable bungler or that he thought the 
fact that some things have economic value and are 
yet not the product of labour irrelevant to his 
argument because he was talking of economic value 
in two senses, firstly in the sense of price, and 
secondly in a peculiar sense of his own. This indeed 
is borne out by his distinction of value and 
price. Croce developing this hint, suggests that 



INTRODUCTION xix 

the importance of Marx's theory lies in a com- 
parison between a capitalist society and another 
abstract economic society in which there are no 
commodities on which labour is not expended, and 
no monopoly. We thus have two abstract societies, 
the capitalist society which though abstract is very 
largely actualised in modern civilisation, and another 
quite imaginary economic society of unfettered 
competition, which is continually assumed by the 
classical economist, but which, as Marx said, could 
only exist where there was no private property in 
capital, i.e. in the collectivist state. 

Now in a society of that kind in which there 
was no monopoly and capital was at everyone's 
disposal equally, the value of commodities would 
represent the value of the labour put into them, 
and that value might be represented in units of 
socially necessary labour time. It would still have 
to be admitted that an hour of one man's labour 
might be of much greater value to the community 
than two hours of another man, but that Marx 
has already allowed for. The unit of socially 
necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the 
hour of one man might contain two or any number 
of such abstract units of labour time. What Marx 
has done is to take the individualist economist at his 
word : he has accepted the notion of an economic 
society as a number of competing individuals. Only 
he has insisted that they shall start fair and there- 
fore that they shall have nothing to buy or sell 
but their labour. The discrepancy between the 



xx INTRODUCTION 

values which would exist in such a society and 
actual prices represent the disturbance created by 
the fact that actual society is not a society of 
equal competitors, but one in which certain com- 
petitors start with some kind of advantage or 
monopoly. 

If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it 
bears a close relation to a simpler and more familiar 
contention, that in a society where free economic 
competition holds sway, each man gets what he 
deserves, for his income represents the sum that 
society is prepared to pay for his services, the social 
value of his work. In this form the hours worked 
are supposed to be uniform, and the differences in 
value are taken to represent different amounts of 
social service. In Marx's argument the social 
necessity is taken as uniform, and the difference in 
value taken to represent differences in hours of 
work. While the main abstract contention remains 
the same, most of those who argue that in a system 
of unfettered economic competition most men get 
what they deserve, rather readily ignore the exist- 
ence of monopoly, and assume that this argument 
justifies the existing distribution of wealth. The 
chief purpose of Marx's argument is to emphasise 
the difference between such an economic system 
and a capitalist society. He is here, as so often, 
turning the logic of the classical economists against 
themselves, and arguing that the conditions under 
which a purely economic distribution of wealth 
could take place, could only exist in a community 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

where monopoly had been completely abolished 
and all capital collectivised. 

Croce maintains that Marx's theory of value 
is economic and not moral. Yet it is hard to read 
Marx and certainly Marxians without finding in 
them the implication that the values produced 
in such an economic society would be just. If that 
implication be examined, we come on an important 
difficulty still remaining in this theory. The con- 
tention that in a system of unfettered economic 
competition, men get the reward they deserve, 
assumes that it is just that if one man has a greater 
power of serving society than another he should be 
more highly rewarded for his work. This the 
individualist argument with which we compared 
Marx's assumes without question. But the Marxian 
theory of value is frequently interpreted to imply 
that amount of work is the only claim to reward. 
For differences in value it is held are created by 
differences in the amount of labour. But the word 
amount may here be used in two senses. When 
men say that the amount of work a man does should 
determine a man's reward ; they commonly mean 
that if one man works two hours and another one, 
the first ought to get twice the reward of the 
second. c Amount ' here means the actual time 
spent in labour. But in Marx's theory of value 
amount means something quite different, for an 
hour of one man's work may, he admits, be equal 
to two of another man's. He means by amount a 
sum of abstract labour time units. Marx's scientific 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

theory of value is quite consistent with different 
abilities getting different rewards, the moral con- 
tention that men should get more reward if they 
work more and for no other reason is not. The 
equation of work done by men of different abilities 
by expressing them in abstract labour time units is 
essential to Marx's theory but fatal to the moral 
claim sometimes founded upon it. 

Further the great difficulty in allowing that it is 
just that men of different abilities should have 
different rewards, comes from the fact that differ- 
ences of ability are of the nature of monopolies. 
In a pure economic society high rewards would be 
given to rare ability and although it is possible to 
equate work of rare ability with work of ordinary 
ability by expressing both as amounts of abstract 
labour time units, it surely remains true that the 
value is determined not by the amount of abstract 
labour time congealed in it but by the law of 
supply and demand. Where there are differences 
of ability there is some kind of monopoly, and 
where there is monopoly, you cannot eliminate the 
influence of the relation of supply and demand in 
the determination of value. What you imagine you 
have eliminated by the elimination of capital, which 
you can collectivise, remains obstinately in in- 
dividual differences of ability which cannot be 
collectivised. 

But here I have entered beyond the limits of 
Croce's argument. His critical appraisement of 
Marx's work must be left toothers to judge who 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

have more knowlege of Marx and of economics 
than I can lay claim to. I am confident only that 
all students of Marx whether they be disciples or 
critics, will find in these essays illumination in a 
field where much bitter controversy has resulted 
in little but confusion and obscurity. 

A. D. Lindsay. 



CHAPTER L CONCERNING THE SCIENTIFIC 
FORM OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 

Historical materialism is what is called a fashion- 
able subject. The theory came into being fifty 
years ago, and for a time remained obscure and 
limited ; but during the last six or seven years 
it has rapidly attained great fame and an exten- 
sive literature, which is daily increasing, has 
grown up around it. It is not my intention to 
write once again the account, already given many 
times, of the origin of this doctrine ; nor to restate 
and criticise the now well-known passages in which 
Marx and Engels asserted the theory, nor the 
different views of its opponents, its supporters, 
its exponents, and its correctors and corruptors. 
My object is merely to submit to my colleagues 
some few remarks concerning the doctrine, taking 
it in the form in which it appears in a recent book 
by Professor Antonio Labriola, of the University 
of Rome '. 

For many reasons, it does not come within my 
province to praise Labriola's book. But I cannot 

1 Del materia lismo stork o, dilucidazione preliminare, Rome, 
E. Loescher, ^1896. See the earlier work by the same 
author: In memoria del '■Manifesto dei communistic 2nd ed. 
Rome, E. Loescher, 1895. 



2 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

help saying as a needful explanation, that it 
appears to me to be the fullest and most ade- 
quate treatment of the question. The book is free 
from pedantry and learned tattle, whilst it shows 
in every line signs of the author's complete know- 
ledge of all that has been written on the subject : 
a book, in short, which saves the annoyance of 
controversy with erroneous and exaggerated opin- 
ions, which in it appear as superseded. It has a 
grand opportunity in Italy, where the materialistic 
theory of history is known almost solely in the 
spurious form bestowed on it by an ingenious 
professor of economics, who even pretends to 
be its inventor 1 . 



I 



I . Scope oj essay : Labriolas boof^ implies that historical 
materialism is not a philosophy of history : Distinction 
between a philosophy of history and philosophising about 
history : Reason why two have been confused : Materi- 
alistic theory of history as stated by Labriola not an 
attempt to establish a law of history : This contrasted 
with theories of monists, and teleologists : EngeW 
statement that it is a new method erroneous: New 
content not new method. 

Any reader of Labriola's book who tries to obtain 
from it a precise concept of the new theory of 
history, will reach in the first instance a conclu- 
sion which must appear to him evident and 
incontestable, and which I sum up in the follow- 
1 I refer to the works of Professor Achille Loria. 



S 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 3 

ing statement : c historical materialism, so-called, 
is not a philosophy of history.' Labriola does not state 
this denial explicitly ; it may even be granted that, 
in words, he sometimes says exactly the opposite. 1 
But, if I am not mistaken, the denial is contained 
implicitly in the restrictions which he places on the 
meaning of the theory. 

The philosophical reaction of realism overthrew 
the systems built up by teleology and metaphysi- 
cal dogmatism, which had limited the field of the 
historian. The old philosophy of history was de- 
stroyed. And, as if in contempt and depreciation, 
the phrase, c to construct a philosophy of history,' 
came to be used with the meaning : ' to construct 
a fanciful and artificial and perhaps prejudiced 
history.' 

It is true that of late books have begun to re- 
appear actually having as their title the 'philo- 
sophy of history.' This might seem to be a revival, 
but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different 
one. These recent productions do not aim at 
supplying a new philosophy of histo?y y they simply 
offer some philosophising about history. The distinction 
deserves to be explained. 

The possibility of a philosophy of history pre- 
supposes the possibility of reducing the sequence 
of history to general concepts. Now, whilst it is 
possible to reduce to general concepts the parti- 
cular factors of reality which appear in history 

1 He calls it on one occasion : ' the final and definite philo- 
sophy of history.' 



4 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

and hence to construct a philosophy of morality 
or of law, of science or of art, and a general philo- 
sophy, it is not possible to work up into general 
concepts the single complex whole formed by 
these factors, i.e. the concrete fact, in which the 
historical sequence consists. To divide it into its 
factors is to destroy it, to annihilate it. In its com- 
plex totality, historical change is incapable of re- 
duction except to one concept, that of development : 
a concept empty of everything that forms the 
peculiar content of history. The old philosophy of 
history regarded a conceptual working out of 
history as possible ; either because by introducing 
the idea of God or of Providence, it read into the 
facts the aims of a divine intelligence ; or because 
it treated the formal concept of development as 
including within itself, logically, the contingent 
determinations. The case of positivism is strange 
in that, being neither so boldly imaginative as to 
yield to the conceptions of teleology and rational 
philosophy, nor so strictly realistic and intellectu- 
ally disciplined as to attack the error at its roots, 
it has halted half way, i.e. at the actual concept of 
development and of evolution, and has announced 
the philosophy of evolution as the true philosophy 
of history : development itself — as the law which 
explains development ! Were this tautology only 
in question little harm would result ; but the 
misfortune is that, by a too easy confusion, the 
concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands 
of the positivists, from the formal emptiness which 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 5 

belongs to it in truth, and acquires a meaning or 
rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings 
of teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious 
unction and reverence with which one hears the 
sacred mystery of evolution spoken of gives suffi- 
cient proof of this. 

From such realistic standpoints, now as always, 
any and every philosophy of history has been 
criticised. But the very reservations and criticisms 
of the old mistaken constructions demand a dis- 
cussion of concepts, that is a process of philoso- 
phising : although it may be a philosophising 
which leads properly to the denial of a philosophy 
of history. Disputes about method, arising out of 
the needs of the historian, are added. The works 
published in recent years embody different investi- 
gations of this kind, and in a plainly realistic sense, 
under the title of philosophy of history. Amongst 
these I will mention as an example a German 
pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst ourselves a 
compendious introduction by Labriola himself. 
There are, undoubtedly, still philosophies of his- 
tory which continue to be produced in the old 
way : voices clamantium in deserto^ to whom may 
be granted the consolation of believing themselves 
the only apostles of an unrecognised truth. 

Now the materialistic theory of history, in the 
form in which Labriola states it, involves an entire 
abandonment of all attempt to establish a law ot 
history, to discover a general concept under which 
all the complex facts of history can be included. 



6 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

I say c in the form in which he states it,* because 
Labriola is aware that several sections of the ma- 
terialistic school of history tend to approximate to 
these obsolete ideas. 

One of these sections, which might be called 
that of the monisms, or abstract materialists^ is char- 
acterised by the introduction of metaphysical ma- 
terialism into the conception of history. 

As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing 
the relation between his opinions and Hegelianism 
employed a pointed phrase which has been taken 
too often beside the point. He said that with Hegel 
history was standing on its head and that it must 
be turned right side up again in order to replace 
it on its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world, 
whereas for him (Marx) * the ideal is nothing else 
than the material world ' reflected and translated 
by the human mind. Hence the statement so often 
repeated, that the materialistic view of history is 
the negation or antithesis of the idealistic view. It 
would perhaps be convenient to study once again, 
accurately and critically, these asserted relations 
between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To 
state the opinion which 1 have formed on the 
matter ; the link between the two views seems to 
me to be, in the main, simply psychological. Hegel- 
ianism was the early inspiration of the youthful 
Marx, and it is natural that everyone should link 
up the new ideas with the old as a development, 
an amendment, an antithesis. In fact, Hegel's 
Ideas — and Marx knew this perfectly well — are 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 7 

not human ideas y and to turn the Hegelian philo- 
sophy of history upside down cannot give us the 
statement that ideas arise as reflections of material 
conditions. The inverted form would logically be 
this : history is not a process of the Idea, i.e. of a 
rational reality, but a system of forces : to the 
rational view is opposed the dynamic view. As to 
the Hegelian dialectic of concepts it seems to me 
to bear a purely external and approximate resem- 
blance to the historical notion of economic eras 
and of the antithetical conditions of society. What- 
ever may be the value of this suggestion, which I 
express with hesitation, recognising the difficulty 
of the problems connected with the interpretation 
and origin of history ; — this much is evident, that 
metaphysical materialism, at which Marx and 
Engels, starting from the extreme Hegelian left, 
easily arrived, supplied the name and some of the 
components of their view of history. But both 
the name and these components are really extran- 
eous to the true character of their conception. This 
can be neither materialistic nor spiritualistic, nor 
dualistic nor monadistic : within its limited field 
the elements of things are not presented in such 
a way as to admit of a philosophical discussion 
whether they are reducible one to another, and are 
united in one ultimate source. What we have be- 
fore us are concrete objects, the earth, natural 
production, animals ; we have before us man, in 
whom the so-called psychical processes appear as 
differentiated from the so-called physiological pro- 



8 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

cesses. To talk in this case of monism and ma- 
terialism is to talk nonsense. Some socialist writers 
have expressed surprise because Lange, in his classic 
History of Materialism, does not discuss historical 
materialism. It is needless to remark that Lange 
was familiar with Marxian socialism. He was, how- 
ever, too cautious to confuse the metaphysical 
materialism with which he was concerned, with 
historical materialism which has no essential con- 
nection with it, and is merely a way of speaking. 

But the metaphysical materialism of the authors 
of the new historical doctrine, and the name given 
to the latter, have been not a little misleading. I will 
refer as an example to a recent and bad little book, 
which seems to me symptomatic, by a sufficiently 
accredited socialist writer, Plechanow. 1 The author, 
designing to study historical materialism, thinks it 
needful to go back to Holbach and Helvetius. 
And he waxes indignant at metaphysical dualism 
and pluralism, declaring that c the most important 
philosophical systems were always monistic, that 
is they interpreted matter and spirit as merely two 
classes of phenomena having a single and indivis- 
ible cause.' And in reference to those who main- 
tain the distinction between the factors in history, 
he exclaims : c We see here the old story, always 
recurring, of the struggle between eclecticism and 
monism, the story of the dividing walls ; here 
nature, there spirit, etc' Many will be amazed at 
this unexpected leap from the materialistic study 
1 Beitrdge zur Geschichte des Materialismus, Stuttgart, 1896. 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 9 

of history into the arms of monism, in which they 
were unaware that they ought to have such con- 
fidence. 

Labriola is most careful to avoid this confusion : 
1 Society is a datum/ he says, c history is nothing 
more than the history of society.' And he contro- 
verts with equal energy and success the naturalists , 
who wish to reduce the history of man to the his- 
tory of nature, and the verbalists, who claim to 
deduce from the name materialism the real nature 
of the new view of history. But it must appear, 
even to him, that the name might have been more 
happily chosen, and that the confusion lies, so to 
speak, inherent in it. It is true that old words can 
be bent to new meanings, but within limits and 
after due consideration. 

In regard to the tendency to reconstruct a ma- 
terialistic philosophy of history, substituting an 
omnipresent Matter for an omnipresent Idea, it 
suffices to re-assert the impossibility of any such 
construction, which must become merely super- 
fluous and tautologous unless it abandoned itself 
to dogmatism. But there is another error, which is 
remarked among the followers of the materialistic 
school of history, and which is connected with the 
former, viz., to anticipate harm not only in the in- 
terpretation of history but also in the guidance of 
practical activities. I refer to the teleological ten- 
dencies (abstract teleology), which also Labriola 
opposes with a cutting attack. The very idea ofpro- 
f gress y which has seemed to many the only law of 



io THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

history worth saving out of the many devised by 
philosophical and non-philosophical thinkers, is by 
him deprived of the dignity of a law, and reduced 
to a sufficiently narrow significance. The idea of it, 
says Labriola, is c not only empirical, but always 
incidental and hence limited ' : progress £ does not 
influence the sequence of human affairs like destiny 
or fate, nor like the command of a law.' History 
teaches us that man is capable of progress ; and 
we can look at all the different series of events 
from this point of view : that is all. No less inci- 
dental and empirical is the idea of historical necessity, 
which must be freed from all remnants of rational- 
ism and of transcendentalism, so that we see in it 
the mere recognition of the very small share left 
in the sequence of events, to individuals and per- 
sonal free will. 

It must be admitted that a little of the blame for 
the teleological and fatalistic misunderstandings 
fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he once had to ex- 
plain, liked to c coquette ' with the Hegelian ter- 
minology : a dangerous weapon, with which it 
would have been better not to trifle. Hence it is 
now thought necessary to give to several of his state- 
ments a somewhat broad interpretation in agree- 
ment with the general trend of his theories. 1 
Another excuse lies in the impetuous confidence 
which, as in the case of any practical work, accom- 

1 See, for example, the comments upon some of Marx's state- 
ments, in the article Trogres et developpement in the Devemr Social 
for March, 1896. 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM n 

panies the practical activities of socialism, and en- 
genders beliefs and expectations which do not al- 
ways agree with prudent critical and scientific 
thought. It is strange to see how the positivists, 
newly converted to socialism, exceed all the others 
(see the effect of a good school!) in their teleological 
beliefs, and their facile predeterminations. They 
swallow again what is worst in Hegelianism, which 
they once so violently opposed without recognising 
it. Labriola has finely said that the very forecasts 
of socialism are merely morphological in nature ; and, 
in fact, neither Marx nor Engels would ever have 
asserted in the abstract that communism must come 
about by an unavoidable necessity, in the manner 
in which they foresaw it. If history is always acci- 
dental, why in this western Europe of ours, might 
not/ a new barbarism arise owing to the effect of 
incalculable circumstances ? Why should not the 
coming of communism be either rendered super- 
fluous or hastened by some of those technical dis- 
coveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have 
hitherto produced the greatest revolutions in the 
course of history ? 

I think then that better homage would be 
rendered to the materialistic view of history, not 
by calling it the final and definite philosophy of his tot y. 
but rather by declaring that properly speaking it 
is not a philosophy of history. This intrinsic nature 
which is evident to those who understand it prop- 
erly, explains the difficulty which exists in finding 
for it a satisfactory theoretical statement ; and why 



12 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

to Labriola it appears to be only in its beginnings 
and yet to need much development. It explains 
too why Engels said (and Labriola accepts the re- 
mark), that it is nothing more than a new method ; 
which means a denial that it is a new theory. But 
is it indeed a new method ? I must acknowledge 
that this name method does not seem to me alto- 
gether accurate. When the philosophical idealists 
tried to arrive at the facts of history by inference, 
this was truly a new method ; and there may still 
exist some fossil of those blessed times, who makes 
such attempts at history. But the historians of the 
materialistic school employ the same intellectual 
weapons and follow the same paths as, let us say, 
the philological historians. They only introduce 
into their work some new data, some new experi- 
ences. The content is different, not the nature of the 
method. 

II 

2. Historical materialism a mass of new data of which 
historian becomes conscious : Does not state that history 
is nothing more than economic history, nor does it provide 
a theory of history : Is simply investigation of influence 
economic needs have exercised in history : This view 
does not detract from its importance. 

I have now reached the point which for me is 
fundamental. Historical materialism is not and 
cannot be a new philosophy of history or a new 
method ; but it is properly this ; a mass of new data, 
of new experiences, of which the historian becomes 
conscious. 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 13 

It is hardly necessary to mention the overthrow 
a short time ago of the naive opinion of the ordinary 
man regarding the objectivity of history ; almost as 
though events spoke, and the historian was there 
to hear and to record their statements. Anyone 
who sets out to write history has before him docu- 
ments and narratives, i.e. small fragments and 
traces of what has actually happened. In order to 
attempt to reconstruct the complete process, he 
must fall back on a series of assumptions, which 
are in fact the ideas and information which he pos- 
sesses concerning the affairs of nature, of man, of 
society. The pieces needed to complete the whole, 
of which he has only the fragments before him, he 
must find within himself. His worth and skill as 
a historian is shown by the accuracy of his adapta- 
tion. Whence it clearly follows that the enrichment 
of these views and experiences is essential to pro- 
gress in historical narration. 

What are these points of view and experiences 
which are offered by the materialistic theory of 
history ? 

That section of Labriola's book which discusses 
this appears to me excellent and sufficient. Labriola 
points out how historical narration in the course of 
its development, might have arrived at the theory 
of historical factors ; i.e., the notion that the sequence 
of history is the result of a number of forces, known 
as physical conditions, social organisations, political 
institutions, personal influences. Historical materi- 
alism goes beyond, to investigate the interaction 



i 4 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

of these factors ; or rather it studies them all 
together as parts of a single process. According 
to this theory — -as is now well known, and as 
Marx expressed it in a classical passage — the 
foundations of history are the methods of produc- 
tion, i.e. the economic conditions which give rise 
to class distinctions, to the constitution of rank 
and of law, and to those beliefs which make up 
social and moral customs and sentiments, the 
reflection whereof is found in art, science and 
religion. 

To understand this point of view accurately is 
not easy, and it is misunderstood by all those who, 
rather than take it in the concrete, state it absolutely 
after the manner of an absolute philosophical truth. 
The theory cannot be maintained in the abstract 
without destroying it, i.e. without turning it into 
the theory of the facto?s, which is according to my 
view, the final word in abstract analysis. 1 Some have 
supposed that historical materialism asserts that 
history is nothing more than economic history, and 
all the rest is simply a mask, an appearance with- 
out reality. And then they labour to discover the 
true god of history, whether it be the productive 
tool or the earth, using arguments which call to 
mind the proverbial discussion about the egg and 
the hen. Friedrich Engels was attacked by someone 

1 For this reason I do not, like Labriola, call the theory of the 
factors a half-theory ; nor do I like the comparison with the 
ancient doctrine, now abandoned in physics, physiology and 
psychology, of physical forces, vital forces and mental faculties. 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 15 

who applied to him to ask how the influence of 
such and such other historical factors ought to be 
understood in reference to the economic factor. 
In the numerous letters which he wrote in reply, 
and which now, since his death, are coming out in 
the reviews, he let it be understood that, when to- 
gether with Marx, upon the prompting of the facts, 
he conceived this new view of history, he had not 
meant to state an exact theory. In one of these 
letters he apologises for whatever exaggeration he 
and Marx may have put into the controversial 
statements of their ideas, and begs that attention 
may be paid to the practical applications made of 
them rather than to the theoretical expressions 
employed. It would be a fine thing, he exclaims, if 
a formula could be given for the interpretation of 
all the facts of history ! By applying this formula, 
it would be as easy to understand any period of 
history as to solve a simple equation. 1 

Labriola grants that the supposed reduction of 
history to the economic factor is a ridiculous notion, 
which may have occurred to one of the too hasty 
defenders of the theory, or to one of its no less 
hasty opponents. 2 He acknowledges the complex- 

1 See a letter dated 21st September 1890, published in the 
Berlin review, Der Socialistische Akademiker, No 19, 1st October 
1895. Another, dated 25th January 1894, is printed in No 20, 
1 6th October, of the same review. 

2 He even distinguishes between the economic interpretation 
and the materialistic view of history. By the first term he means 
c those attempts at analysis, which taking separately on the one 
hand the economic forms and categories, and on the other for 
example, law, legislation, politics, custom, proceed to study the 



1 6 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

ity of history, how the products of the first degree 
first establish themselves, and then isolate them- 
selves and become independent ; the ideals which 
harden into traditions, the persistent survivals, the 
elasticity of the psychical mechanism which makes 
the individual irreducible to a type of his class or 
social position, the unconsciousness and ignorance 
of their own situations often observed in men, the 
stupidity and unintelligibility of the beliefs and sup- 
erstitions arising out of unusual accidents and com- 
plexities. And since man lives a natural as well as 
a social existence, he admits the influence of race, of 
temperament and of the promptings of nature. 
And, finally, he does not overlook the influence 
of the individual, i.e. of the work of those who are 
called great men^ who if they are not the creators, 
are certainly collaborators of history. 

With all these concessions he realises, if I am 
not mistaken, that it is useless to look for a theory, 
in any strict sense of the word, in historical materi- 
alism ; and even that it is not what can properly 
be called a theory at all. He confirms us in this view 
by his fine account of its origin, under the stimulus 
of the French Revolution, that great school of 
sociology — as he calls it. The materialistic view 

mutual influences of the different sides of life, thus abstractly 
and subjectively distinguished.' By the second, on the contrary, 
' the organic view of history' of the ' totality and unity of social 
life,' where economics itself ' is melted into the tide of a process, 
to appear afterwards in so many morphological stages, in each 
of which it forms the basis relatively to the rest which corre- 
sponds to and agrees with it.' 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 17 

of history arose out of the need to account for a 
definite social phenomenon, not from an abstract 
inquiry into the factors of historical life. It was 
created in the minds of politicians and revolution- 
ists, not of cold and calculating savants of the 
library. 

At this stage someone will say : — But if the 
theory, in the strict sense, is not true, wherein then 
lies the discovery ? In what does the novelty con- 
sist ? To speak in this way is to betray a belief that 
intellectual progress consists solely in the perfecting 
of the forms and abstract categories of thought. 

Have approximate observations no value in 
addition to theories ? The knowledge of what has 
usually happened, everything in short that is called 
experience of life, and which can be expressed in 
general but not in strictly accurate terms ? Granting 
this limitation and understanding always an almost 
and an about, there are discoveries to be made 
which are fruitful in the interpretation of life and 
of history. Such are the assertions of the dependence 
of all parts of life upon each other, and of their 
origin in the economic subsoil, so that it can be said 
that there is but one single history ; the discovery 
of the true nature of the State (as it appears in the 
empirical world), regarded as an institution for 
the defence of the ruling class ; the proved depend- 
ence of ideals upon class interests ; the coincidence 
of the great epochs of history with the great econ- 
omic eras ; and the many other observations by 
which the school of historical materialism is en- 



18 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

riched. Always with the aforesaid limitations, it 
may be said with Engels : c that men make their 
history themselves, but within a given limited 
range, on a basis of conditions actually pre-existent, 
amongst which the economic conditions, although 
they may be influenced by the others, the political 
and ideal, are yet, in the final analysis, decisive, 
and form the red thread which runs through the 
whole of history and guides us to an understanding 
thereof. 

From this point of view too, I entirely agree with 
Labriola in regarding as somewhat strange the in- 
quiries made concerning the supposed forerunners 
and remote authors of historical materialism, and 
as quite mistaken the inferences that these inquiries 
will detract from the importance and originality 
of the theory. The Italian professor of economics 
to whom I referred at the beginning, when con- 
victed of a plagiarism, thought to defend himself 
by saying that, at bottom, Marx's idea was not 
peculiar to Marx ; hence, at worst, he had robbed 
a thief. He gave a list of forerunners, reaching 
back as far as Aristotle. Just lately, another Italian 
professor reproved a colleague with much less 
justice for having forgotten that the economic 
interpretation had been explained by Lorenzo Stein 
before Marx. I could multiply such examples. All 
this reminds me of one of Jean Paul Richter's 
sayings : that we hoard our thoughts as a miser 
does his money ; and only slowly do we exchange 
the money for possessions, and thoughts for ex- 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 19 

periences and feelings. Mental observations attain 
real importance through the realisation in thought 
and an insight into the fulness of their possibilities. 
This realisation and insight have been granted to the 
modern socialist movement and to its intellectual 
leaders Marx and Engels. We may read even in 
Thomas More that the State is a conspiracy of the 
rich who make plots for their own convenience : 
quaedarn conspiratio divitum^ de suis commodis reipub- 
licae nomine tituloque tractantium, and call their 
intrigues laws : machin amenta jam leges fiunt. 1 And, 
leaving Sir Thomas More — who, after all, it will 
be said, was a communist — who does not know 
by heart Marzoni's lines : Un odiosa Forza ilmondo 
possiede e fa nomarsi Dritto. . . . 2 But the materialist 
and socialist interpretation of the State is not there- 
fore any the less new. The common proverb, indeed, 
tells us that interest is the most powerful motive 
for human actions and conceals itself under the 
most varied forms ; but it is none the less true 
that the student of history who has previously 
examined the teachings of socialist criticism, is like 
a short-sighted man who has provided himself with 
a good pair of spectacles : he sees quite differently 
and many mysterious shadows reveal their exact 
shape. 

In regard to historical narrative then, the 
materialistic view of history resolves itself into a 

1 Utopia, L. 11 (Thomje Mori angli Opera, Louvaln 1566, 
f. 18.) 

2 ' Hateful Force rules the world and calls itself Justice.' 



20 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

warning to keep its observations in mind as a new 
aid to the understanding of history. Few problems 
are harder than that which the historian has to 
solve. In one particular it resembles the problem 
of the statesman, and consists in understanding the con- 
ditions of a^iven nation at a given time in respect to their 
causes and functioning ; but with this difference : the 
historian confines himself to exposition, the states- 
man proceeds further to modification ; the former 
pays no penalty for misunderstanding, whereas the 
latter is subjected to the severe correction of facts. 
Confronted by such a problem, the majority of 
historians — I refer in particular to the conditions 
of the study in Italy — proceed at a disadvantage, 
almost like the savants of the old school who con- 
structed philology and researched into etymology. 
Aids to a closer and deeper understanding, have 
come at length from different sides, and frequently. 
But the one which is now offered by the material- 
istic view of history is great, and suited to the 
importance of the modern socialist movement. It 
is true that the historian must render exact and 
definite in each particular instance, that co-ordina- 
tion and subordination of factors which is indicated 
by historical materialism, in general, for the greater 
number of cases, and approximately ; herein lies 
his task and his difficulties, which may sometimes 
be insurmountable. But now the road has been 
pointed out, along which the solution must be 
sought, of some of the greatest problems of history 
apart from those which have been already elucidated. 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 21 

I will say nothing of the recent attempts at an 
historical application of the materialistic conception, 
because it is not a subject to hurry over in passing, 
and I intend to deal with it on another occasion. 
I will content myself with echoing Labriola, who 
gives a warning against a mistake, common to 
many of these attempts. This consists in retran- 
y slating, as he says, into economic phraseology, the 
old historical perspective which of late has so 
often been translated into Darwinian phraseology. 
Certainly it would not be worth while to create a 
new movement in historical studies in order to 
attain such a result. 



Ill 

3. Questions as to relation between historical materialism and 
socialism : Only possible connection lies in special historical 
application : Bearing of historical materialism upon 
intellectual and moral truth : Throws light on influence 
of material conditions on their development, but does not 
demonstrate their relativity : Absolute morality a necess- 
ary postulate of socialism. 



Two things seem to me to deserve some further 
explanation. What is the relation between historical 
materialism and socialism ? Labriola, if I am not 
mistaken, is inclined to connect closely and almost 
to identify the two things. The whole of socialism 
lies in the materialistic interpretation of history, 
which is the truth itself of socialism ; to accept one 
and reject the other is to understand neither. I 
consider this statement to be somewhat exaggerated ? 



22 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

or, at least, to need explanation. If historical 
materialism is stripped of every survival of finality 
and of the benignities of providence, it can afford 
no apology for either socialism or any other 
practical guidance for life. On the other hand, in 
its special historical application, in the assertion which 
can be made by its means^ its real and close connec- 
tion with socialism is to be found. This assertion 
is as follows : — Society is now so constituted that 
socialism is the only possible solution which it 
contains within itself. An assertion and forecast of 
this kind moreover will need to be filled out 
before it can be a basis for practical action. It 
must be completed by motives of interest, or by 
ethical and sentimental motives, moral judgments 
and the enthusiasms of faith. The assertion in itself 
is cold and powerless. It will be insufficient to 
move the cynic, the sceptic, the pessimist. But it 
will suffice to put on their guard all those classes 
of society who see their ruin in the sequence of 
history and to pledge them to a long struggle, 
although the final outcome may be useless. Amongst 
these classes is the proletariat, which indeed aims 
at the extinction of its class. Moral conviction 
and the force of sentiment must be added to give 
positive guidance and to supply an imperative 
ideal for those who neither feel the blind im- 
pulse of class interest, nor allow themselves to 
be swept along by the whirling current of the 
times. 

The final point which I think demands explana- 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 23 

tion, although in this case also the difference 
between myself and Labriola does not appear to be 
serious, is this : to what conclusions does historical 
materialism lead in regard to the ideal values of 
man, in regard that is to intellectual truth and to 
what is called moral truth ? 

The history of the origin of intellectual truth is 
undoubtedly made clearer by historical materialism, 
which aims at showing the influence of actual 
material conditions upon the opening out, and the 
very development of the human intellect. Thus 
the history of opinions, like that of science, needs 
to be for the most part re-written from this point 
of view. But those who, on account of such con- 
siderations concerning historical origins, return in 
triumph to the old relativity and scepticism, are 
confusing two quite distinct classes of problem. 
Geometry owes its origin no doubt to given con- 
ditions which are worth determining ; but it does 
not follow that geometrical truth is something 
merely historical and relative. The warning seems 
superfluous, but even here misunderstandings are 
frequent and remarkable. Have I not read in 
some socialist author that Marx's discoveries them- 
selves are of merely historical importance and must 
necessarily be disowned. I do not know what meaning 
this can have unless it has the very trivial one of 
a recognition of the limitation of all human work, 
or unless it resolves itself into the no less idle 
remark that Marx's thought is the offspring of his 
age. This onesided history is still more dangerous 



24 THE SCIENTIFIC FORM 

in reference to moral truth. The science of morality 
is evidently now in a transformation stage. The 
ethical imperative, whose classics are Kant's Kritik 
der reinen Vernunft, and Herbart's Allgemeine 
praktische Philosophies appears no longer adequate. 
In addition to it an historical and a formal science of 
morality are making their appearance, which regard 
morality as a fact, and study its universal nature 
apart from all preoccupations as to creeds and rules. 
This tendency shows itself not only in socialistic 
circles, but also elsewhere, and it will be sufficient 
forme to refer to Simmel's clever writings^ Labriola 
is thus justified in his defence of new methods of 
regarding morality. c Ethics, — he says, — for us 
resolves itself into an historical study of the sub- 
jective and objective conditions according to which 
morality develops or finds hindrances to its de- 
velopment/ But he adds cautiously, c in this way 
alone, i.e., within these limits, is there value in 
the statement that morality corresponds to the 
social situation, i.e., in the final analysis to the 
economic conditions.' The question of the intrinsic 
and absolute worth of the moral ideal, of its re- 
ducibility or irreducibility to intellectual truth, 
remains untouched. 

It would perhaps have been well if Labriola had 
dwelt a little more on this point. A strong tendency 
is found in socialistic literature towards a moral 
relativity, not indeed historical, but substantial, 
which regards morality as a vain imagination. This 
tendency is chiefly due to the necessity in which 



OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 25 

Marx and Engels found themselves, in face of the 
various types of Utopians, of asserting that the so- 
called social question is not a moral question, — i.e. 
as this must be interpreted, it cannot be solved by- 
sermons and so-called moral methods — and to their 
bitter criticism of class ideals and hypocrisies/ This 
result was helped on, as it seems to me, by the 
Hegelian source of the views of Marx and Engels ; 
it being obvious that in the Hegelian philosophy 
ethics loses the rigidity given to it by Kant and 
preserved by Herbart. And lastly the name mater- 
ialism is perhaps not without influence here, since 
it brings to mind at once well-understood interests 
and the calculating comparison of pleasures. It is, 
however, evident that idealism or absolute morality 
is a necessary postulate of socialism. Is not the in- 
terest which prompts the formation of a concept 
of surplus-value a moral interest, or social if it is 
preferred ? Can surplus value be spoken of in pure 
economics ? Does not the labourer sell his labour- 
power for exactly what it is worth, given his posi- 
tion in existing society ? And, without the moral 
postulate, how could we ever explain Marx's 
political activity, and that note of violent indigna- 
tion and bitter satire which is felt in every page 
of Das Kapital? But enough of this, for I find 
myself making quite elementary statements such 

1 From this point of view it is worth while to note the 
antipathy which leaks out in socialist writings towards Schiller, 
the poet of the Kantian morality aesthetically modified, who 
has become the favourite poet of the German middle 
classes. 



26 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 

as can only be overlooked owing to ambiguous or 
exaggerated phraseology. 

And in conclusion, I repeat my regret, already 
expressed, concerning this name materialism, which 
is not justified in this case, gives rise to numerous 
misunderstandings, and is a cause of derision to 
opponents. So far as history is concerned, I would 
gladly keep to the name realistic view of history, 
which denotes the opposition to all teleology and 
metaphysics within the sphere of history, and com- 
bines both the contribution made by socialism to 
historical knowledge and those contributions which 
may subsequently be brought from elsewhere. 
Hence my friend Labriola ought not to attach too 
much importance, in his serious thoughts, to the 
adjectives final and definite, which have slipped from 
his pen. Did he not once tell me himself that 
Engels still hoped for other discoveries which 
might help us to understand that mystery, made 
by ourselves, and which is History ? 

May, 1896. 



CHAPTER II. CONCERNING HISTORICAL 
MATERIALISM VIEWED AS A SCI- 
ENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 

I. Relation between Professor Stammler s book on historical 
materialism and Marxism : Distinction between pure 
economics and general historical economics : Socialism not 
dependent on abstract sociological theory : Stammlers 
classification of the social sciences : His definition of so- 
ciety : Of social economics : Of social teleology : Nature 
of Stammlers social science does not provide abstract 
sociology : Social economics must be either pure economics 
applied to society or a form of history. 

The attentive reader of Professor Stammler's 
book, 1 realises at the outset that it treats of the 
materialistic theory of history not as a fruitful guide 
to the interpretation of historical fact, but as a 
science or philosophy of society. 

A number of attempts have been made, based 
in the first instance on Marx's statements, to build 
up on these statements a general theory of history 
or of society. It is on these attempts then, and not 
on the least bold amongst them, that Stammler 
bases his work, making them the starting' point of 
his criticism and reconstruction. It may be precisely 

1 Wirthschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauft- 
assungy eine socialphilosophische Untersuchung, Dr Rudolph 
Stammler, Professor at the University of Halle, A.S., Leipzig, 
Veit U.C., 1896, pp. viii-668. 



28 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

on this account that he chooses to discuss historical 
materialism in the form given to it by Engels, — 
which he calls the most complete, the authentic (!) 
statement of the principles of social materialism. 
He prefers this form to that of Marx, which he 
thinks too disconnected ; and which is, indeed, less 
easily reduced to abstract generalities ; whereas 
Engels was one of the first to give to historical 
materialism a meaning more important than its 
original one. To Engels, also, as is well known, is 
due the very name materialism as applied to this 
view of history. 

We cannot, indeed, deny that the materialistic 
view of history has in fact developed in two direc- 
tions, distinct in kind if not in practice , viz. : (i) 
a movement relating to the writing of history, and (2) 
a science and philosophy of society. Hence there is no 
ground for objecting to Stammler's procedure, when 
he confines himself to this second problem, and 
takes it up at the point to which he thinks that 
the followers of historical materialism have brought 
it. But it should be clearly pointed out that he does 
not concern himself at all with the problems of 
historical method. He leaves out of account that 
is, what, for some people — and for me amongst 
them — is the side of this movement of thought 
which is of living and scientific interest. 

Professor Stammler remarks how in the proposi- 
tions employed by the believers in historical ma- 
terialism : c the economic factor dominates the other 
factors of social life, 1 c the economic factor is fundamental 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 29 

and the others are dependent^ and the like, the con- 
cept economic has never been defined. He is justi- 
fied in making this remark, and in attaching the 
greatest importance to it, if he regards and inter- 
prets those propositions as assertions of laws, as 
strict propositions of social science. To use as 
essential in statements of this kind, a concept which 
could neither be defined nor explained, and which 
therefore remained a mere word, would indeed be 
somewhat odd. But his remark is entirely irrele- 
vant when these propositions are understood as : 
c summaries of empirical observations, by the help 
of which concrete social facts may be explained.' 1 
do not think that any sensible person has ever ex- 
pected to find in those expressions an accurate and 
philosophical definition of concepts ; yet all sensible 
people readily understand to what class of facts 
they refer. The word economic here, as in ordinary 
language, corresponds, not to a concept, but to a 
group of rather diverse representations, some of 
which are not even qualitative in content, but quan- 
titative. When it is asserted, that in interpreting 
history we must look chiefly at the economic factors, 
we think at once of technical conditions, of the 
distribution of wealth, of classes and sub-classes 
bound together by definite common interests, and 
so on . It is true these different representations can- 
not be reduced to a single concept, but no matter, 
there is no question of that : here we are in an 
entirely different sphere from that in which abstract 
questions are discussed. 



30 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

This point is not without interest and may be 
explained more in detail. If economic be understood 
in its strict sense, for example, in the sense in which 
it is employed in pure economics, i.e., if by it be 
meant the axiom according to which all men seek 
the greatest satisfaction with the least possible effort, 
it is plain that to say that this factor plays a part 
(essential, dominant, or equal to that of the others) 
in social life, would tell us nothing concrete. The 
economic axiom is a very general and purely a formal 
principle of conduct. It is inconceivable that any- 
one should act without applying, well or ill, the 
very principle of every action, i.e., the economic 
principle. Worse still if economic be taken in the 
sense which, as we shall see, Professor Stammler 
gives to it. He understands by this word : c all 
concrete social facts ' ; in which sense it would at 
once become absurd to assert that the economic 
factor, i.e., all social facts in the concrete dominated, 
a part of these facts ! Thus in order to give a mean- 
ing to the word economic in this proposition, it is 
necessary to leave the abstract and formal ; to assign 
definite ends to human action ; to have in mind an 
c historical man/ or rather the average man of his- 
tory, or of a longer or shorter period of history ; 
to think, for example, of the need for bread, for 
clothes, for sexual relations, for the so-called moral 
satisfactions, esteem, vanity, power and so on. The 
phrase economic factor now refers to groups of con- 
crete facts, which are built up in common speech, 
and which have been better defined from the actual 
application made of the above-mentioned proposi- 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 31 

tions in historical narrative and in the practical 
programmes of Marx and his followers. 

In the main, this is recognised by Professor 
Stammler himself when he gives an admirable ex- 
planation of the current meaning of the expressions : 
economic facts and political facts, revolutions more poli- 
tical than economic and vice versa. Such distinctions, 
he says, can only be understood in the concrete, in 
reference to the aims pursued by the different sec- 
tions of society, and to the special problems of social 
life. According to him, however, Marx's work does 
not deal with such trifling matters : as, for instance, 
that so-called economic life influences ideas, science 
art and so on : old lumber of little consequence. 
Just as philosophical materialism does not consist 
in the assertion that bodily facts have an influence 
over spiritual, but rather in the making of these 
latter a mere appearance, without reality, of the 
former : so historical materialism must consist in 
asserting that economics is the true reality and that 
law is a fallacious appearance. 

But, with all deference to Professor Stammler, 
we believe that these trifling matters, to which he 
contemptuously refers, are precisely what are dealt 
with in Marx's propositions ; and, moreover, we 
think them neither so trifling nor of such little 
consequence. Hence Professor Stammler's book 
does not appear to us a criticism of the most vital 
part of historical materialism, viz., of a movement 
or school of historians. The criticism of history 
is made by history ; and historical materialism is 
history made or in the making. 



32 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

Nor does it provide the starting point for a 
criticism of socialism ', as the programme of a definite 
social movement. Stammler deceives himself when 
he thinks that socialism is based on the material- 
istic philosophy of history as he expounds it : on 
which philosophy are based, on the contrary, the 
illusions and caprices of some or of many socialists. 
Socialism cannot depend on an abstract sociological 
theory, since the basis would be inadequate pre- 
cisely because it was abstract ; nor can it depend 
on a philosophy of history as rhythmical or of little 
stability, because the basis would be transitory. 
On the contrary, it is a complex fact and results 
from different elements ; and, so far as concerns 
history, socialism does not presuppose a philosophy 
of history , but an historical conception determined by the 
existing conditions of society and the manner in which 
this has come about. If we put on one side the doc- 
trines superimposed subsequently, and read again 
Marx's pages without prejudice, we shall then see 
that he had, at bottom, no other meaning when he 
referred to history as one of the factors justifying 
socialism. 

' The necessity for the socialisation of the means 
of production is not proved scientifically.' Stammler 
means that the concept of necessity as employed by 
many Marxians, is erroneous ; that the denial of 
teleology is absurd, and that hence the assertion 
of the socialisation of the means of production as 
the social programme is not logically accounted for. 
This does not hinder this assertion from being 
possibly quite true. Either because, in addition to 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 33 

logical demonstrations there are fortunate intui- 
tions, or because a conclusion can be true although 
derived from a false premiss : it suffices, obviously, 
that there should be two errors which cancel one 
another. And this would be so in our case. The 
denial of teleology ; the tacit acceptance of this 
same teleology : here is a method scientifically in- 
correct with a conclusion that may be valid. It re- 
mains to examine the whole tissue of experiences, 
deductions, aspirations and forecasts in which so- 
cialism really consists ; and over which Stammler 
passes indifferently, content to have brought to 
light an error in the philosophical statement of a 
remote postulate, an error which some, or it may 
be many, of the supporters and politicians of social- 
ism commit. 

All these reservations are needed in order to 
fix the scope of Stammler's investigation ; but it 
would be a mistake to infer from them that we re- 
ject the starting point of the inquiry itself. Histori- 
cal materialism — says Professor Stammler — has 
proved unable to give us a valid science of society : 
we, however, believe that this was not its main or 
original object. The two statements come practi- 
cally to the same thing : the science of society is 
not contained in the literature of the materialistic 
theory. Professor Stammler adds that although 
historical materialism does not offer an acceptable 
social theory, it nevertheless gives a stimulus of the 
utmost intensity towards the formation of such a 
theory. This seems to us a matter of merely indi- 
vidual psychology : suggestions and stimuli, as 

D 



34 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

everyone knows, differ according to the mind that 
receives them. The literature of historical material- 
ism has always aroused in us a desire to study his- 
tory in the concrete, i.e., to reconstruct the actual 
historical process. In Professor Stammler, on the 
contrary, it arouses a desire to throw aside this 
meagre empirical history, and to work with abstrac- 
tions in order to establish concepts and general 
points of view. The problems which he sets before 
himself, might be arrived at psychologically by 
many other paths. 

There is a tendency, at present, to enlarge un- 
duly the boundaries of social studies. But Stammler 
rightly claims a definite and special subject for 
what ought to be called social science ; that is de- 
finite social data. Social science must include nothing 
which has not sociability as its determining cause. 
How can ethics ever be social science, since it is 
based on cases of conscience which evade all social 
rules ? Custom is the social fact, not morality. How 
c&npure economics or technology ever be social science, 
since those concepts are equally applicable to the 
isolated individual and to societies ? Thus in study- 
ing social data we shall see that, considered in 
general, they give rise to two distinct theories. 
* The first theory regards the concept society from 
' the causal standpoint ; the second regards it from 
the teleological standpoint. Causality and teleology 
j cannot be substituted the one for the other ; but 
one forms the complement of the other. 

If, then, we pass from the general and abstract 
to the concrete, we have society as existing in his- 

/ 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 3$ 

tory. The study of the facts which develop in con- 
crete society Stammler consigns to a science which 
he calls social (or political, or national) economics. 
From such facts may still be abstracted the mere 
form, Le.y the collection of rules supplied by history 
by which they are governed ; and this may be 
studied independently of the matter. Thus we get 
jurisp?udence y or the technical science of law ; which 
is always bound up inseparably with a given actual 
historical material, which it works up by scientific 
method, endeavouring to give it unity and coher- 
ence. Finally, amongst social studies are also in- 
cluded those investigations which aim at judging 
and determining whether a given social order is as 
it ought to be ; and whether attempts to preserve 
or change it are objectively justified. This section 
may be called that of practical social problems. By 
such definitions and divisions Professor Stammler 
exhausts every possible form of social study. Thus 
we should have the following scheme : 



Social Science. 



General Study f Causal, 
of Society. ( Teleological. 



Study of Con- 
crete Society. 



of the form 
(technical sci- 
ence of law). 

of the matter 
(social econo- 
mics). 

of the possible, 
(practical pro- 
blems). 



36 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

We believe that this table correctly represents 
his views, although given in our own way, and in 
words somewhat different from those used by him. 
A new treatment of the social sciences, the work 
of serious and keen ability, such as Stammler seems 
to possess, cannot fail to receive the earnest atten- 
tion of all students of a subject which is still so 
vague and controversial. Let us examine it then 
section by section. 

The first investigation relating to society, that 
concerned with causality, would be directed to solv- 
ing the problem of the nature of society. Many de- 
finitions have been given of this up to the present : 
and none of them can be said to be generally ac- 
cepted, or even to claim wide support. Stammler 
indeed, rejects, after criticism, the definitions of 
Spencer or Rumelin, which appear to him to be the 
most important and to be representative of all the 
others. Society is not an organism (Spencer), nor is 
it merely something opposed to legalised society 
(Rumelin) : Society, says Stammler, is c life lived 
by men in common, subject to rules which are externally 
binding' These rules must be understood in a very 
wide sense, as all those which bind men living to- 
gether to something which is satisfied by outward 
performance. They are divided, however, into two 
large classes : rules properly speaking legal, and 
rules of convention. The second class includes the 
precepts of propriety and of custom, the code of 
knightly honour, and so on. The distinctive test 
lies in the fact that the latter class are merely hyDo- 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 37 

thetkal) while the former are imposed without being 
desired by those subjected to them. The whole as- 
semblage of rules, legal and conventional, Stammler 
calls social form. Under these rules, obeying them, 
limiting them and even breaking them men act in 
order to satisfy their desires ; in this, and in this 
alone, human life consists. The assemblage of con- 
crete facts which men produce when working to- 
gether in society, i.e. y under the assumption of 
social rules, Stammler calls social matter, or social 
economics. Rules, and actions under rules ; these are 
the two elements of which every social datum con- 
sists. If the rules were lacking, we should be out- 
side society ; we should be animals or gods, as 
says the old proverb : if the actions were lacking 
there would remain only an empty form, built up 
hypothetically by thought, and no portion of which 
was actually real. Thus social life appears as a single 
fact : to separate its two constituent factors means 
either to destroy it, or to reduce it to empty form. 
The law governing changes within society cannot 
be found in something which is extra social ; not 
in technique and discovery, nor in the workings of 
supposed natural laws, nor in the influence of great 
men, of mysterious racial and national spirit ; but 
it must be sought in the very centre of the social 
fact itself. Hence it is wrong to speak of a causal 
bond between law and economics or vice versa : 
the relation between law and economics is that be- 
tween the rule and the things ruled, not one of 
cause and effect. The determining cause of social 



38 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

movements and changes is then ultimately to be 
found in the actual working out of social rules, 
which precede such changes. This concrete working 
out, these actions accomplished under rules, may 
produce (i) social mutations which are entirely 
quantitative (in the number of social facts of one or 
another kind) ; (2) mutations which are also quali- 
tative, consisting that is in changes in the rules 
themselves. Hence the circle of social life : rules, 
social facts arising under them ; ideas, opinions, 
desires, efforts resulting from the facts ; changes 
in the rules. When and how this circle originated, 
that is to say when and how social life arose on the 
earth, is a question for history, which does not 
concern the theorist. Between social life and non- 
social life there are no gradations, theoretically 
there is a gulf. But as long as social life exists, there 
is no escape from the circle described above. 

The form and matter of social life thus come 
into conflict, and from this conflict arises change. 
By what test can the issue of the conflict be de- 
cided ? To appeal to facts, to invent a causal neces- 
sity which may agree with some ideal necessity is 
absurd. In addition to the law of social causality, 
which has been expounded, there must be a law of 
ends and ideals, i.e., a social teleology. According to 
Stammler, historical materialism identifies, nor 
would it be the only theory to attempt such an 
identification, causality and teleology ; but it, too, 
cannot escape from the logical contradictions which 
such assertions contain. Much praise has been given 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 39 

to that section of Professor Stammler's book in 
which he shows how teleological assumptions are 
constantly implied by historical materialism in all 
its assertions of a practical nature. But we confess 
that the discovery seems to us exceedingly easy, 
not to be compared to that of Columbus about the 
egg. Here again we must point out that the pivot 
of the Marxian doctrine lies in the practical problem 
and not in the abstract theory. The denial of finality 
is, at bottom, the denial of a merely subjective and 
peculiar finality. And here, too, although the criti- 
cism as applied to historical materialism seems to 
us hardly accurate, we agree with Stammler's con- 
clusion, i.e., that it is necessary to construct, or 
better to reconstruct, with fresh material, a theory 
of social teleology. 

Let us omit, for the present, an examination of 
Stammler's construction of teleology, which in- 
cludes some very fine passages (e.g. the criticism 
of the anarchist doctrine) and ask instead : What 
is this social science of Stammler, of which we have 
stated the striking and characteristic features ? The 
reader will have little difficulty in discovering that 
the second investigation, that concerning social tele- 
ology, is nothing but a modernised philosophy of law. 
And the first ? Is it that long desired and hitherto 
vainly sought general sociology ? Does it give us a 
new and acceptable concept of society ? To us it 
appears evident that the first investigation is noth- 
ing but a formal science of law. In it Professor Stam- 
mler studies law as a fact y and hence he cannot find 



4 o HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

it except in society subjected to rules imposed from with- 
out. In the second, he studies law as an ideal and 
constructs the philosophy (imperative) of law. We 
are not here questioning the value of the investiga- 
tion, but its nature. The present writer is convinced 
that social data leave no place for an abstract inde- 
pendent science. Society is a living together ; the 
kind of phenomena which appear in this life to- 
gether is the concern of descriptive history. But it 
is perfectly possible to study this life together from 
a given point of view, e.g., from the legal point of 
view, or, in general, from that of the legal and non- 
legal rules to which it can be subjected ; and this 
Stammler has done. And, in so doing, he has ex- 
amined the nature of law, separating the concrete 
individual laws and the Ideal type of law ; which 
he has then studied apart. This is the reason why 
Stammler's investigation seems to us a truly scienti- 
fic investigation and very well carried out, but not an 
abstract and general science of society. Such a science 
is for us inconceivable, just as a formal science 
of law is, on the contrary, perfectly conceivable. 

As to the second investigation, that concerning 
teleology, there would be some difficulty in includ- 
ing it in the number of sciences if it be admitted 
that ideals are not subjects for science. But here 
Professor Stammler himself comes to our assistance 
by assigning the foundation of social teleology to 
philosophy, which he defines as the science of the 
True and of the Good, the science of the Absolute, 
and understands in a non-formal sense. 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 41 

Professor Stammler speaks readily of a monism 
of the social life, and accepts as suitable and accur- 
ate the name materialism as applied to Marx's con- 
ception of history, and connects this materialism 
with metaphysical materialism, applying to it also 
Lange's statement, viz., that c materialism may be 
the first and lowest step of philosophy, but it is 
also the most substantial and solid/ For him his- ' 
torical materialism offers truth, but not the whole 
truth, since it regards as real the matter only and 
not the form of social life ; hence the necessity of 
completing it by restoring the form to its place, and 
fixing the relation between fotm and matter, com- 
bining the two in the unity of social life. We doubt 
whether Engels and his followers ever understood 
the phrase social materialism in the sense which 
Stammler assigns to it. The parallel drawn between 
it and metaphysical materialism seems to us some- 
what arbitrary. 

We come to the group of concrete sciences, i.e., 
those which have for their subject society as given 
in history. No one who has had occasion to con- 
sider the problem of the classification of the sciences, 
will be inclined to give the character of independ- 
ent and autonomous sciences to studies of the 
practical problems of this or that society, and to 
jurisprudence, and the technical study of law. This 
latter is only an interpretation or explanation of a 
given existing legal system, made either for prac- 
tical reasons, or as simple historical knowledge. 
But what we think merits attention more than these 



42 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

questions of terminology and classification, is the 
conception of social economics, advanced by Stamm- 
ler ; of the second, that is, of the concrete social 
sciences, enumerated above. The difficulties arising 
out of this conception are more serious, and centre 
on the following points ; whether it is a new and 
valid conception, or whether it should be reduced 
to something already known ; or finally whether 
it is not actually erroneous. 

Stammler holds forth at length against economics 
regarded as a science in itself, which has its own 
laws and which has its source in an original and 
irreducible economic principle. It is a mistake, he 
says, to put forward an abstract economic science 
and subdivide it into economic science relating to 
the individual and social economic science. There 
is no ground of union between these two sciences, 
because the economics of the isolated individual 
offers us only concepts which are dealt with by the 
natural sciences and by technology, and is nothing 
but an assemblage of simple natural observations, 
explained by means of physiology and individual 
psychology. Social economics, on the other hand, 
offers the peculiar and characteristic conditions of 
the externally binding rules, under which activities 
develop. And what can an economic principle be if 
not a hypothetical maxim : the man who wishes 
to secure this or that object of subjective satisfac- 
tion must employ these or those means, c a maxim 
which is more or less generally obeyed, and some- 
times violated ' ? The dilemma lies then between 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 43 

the natural and technological consideration and the 
social one : there is no third thing. c Ein Drittes ist 
nicht da I ' This Stammler frequently reiterates, and 
always in the same words. But the dilemma (whose 
unfortunate inspiration he owes to Kant) does not 
hold, it is a case of a trilemma. Besides the con- 
crete social facts, and besides the technological and 
natural knowledge, there is a third thing, viz., the 
economic principle, or hedonistic postulate, as it 
is preferred to call it. Stammler asserts that this 
third thing is not equal in value to the two first 
ones, that it comes as a secondary consideration, and 
we confess that we do not clearly understand what 
this means. What he ought to prove is that this 
principle can be reduced to the two former ones, 
viz., to the technical or to the social conditions. 
This he has not done, and indeed we do not know 
how it could be done. That economics, thus under- 
stood, is not social science, we are so much the 
more inclined to agree since he himself says as 
much in calling itpu?e economics, *.<?., something 
built up by abstraction from particular facts and 
hence also from the social fact. But this does not 
mean that it is not applicable to society, and cannot 
give rise to inferences in social economics. The social 
factor is then assumed as a medium through which 
the economic principle displays its influence and 
produces definite results. Granted the economic 
principle, and granted, for example, the legal re- 
gulation of private property in land, and the exist- 
ence of land differing in quality, and granted other 



44 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

conditions, then the fact of rent of land arises of 
necessity. In this and other like examples, which 
could easily be brought forward, we have laws of 
social and political economics, i,e\ deductions from 
the economic principle acting under given legal 
conditions. It is true that, under other legal con- 
ditions, the effects would be different ; but none 
of the effects would occur were it not for the econo- 
mic nature of man, which is a necessary postulate, 
and not to be identified with the postulate of tech- 
nical knowledge, or with any other of the social 
rules. To know is not to will ; and to will in accord- 
ance with objective rules is not to will in accordance 
with ideals which are merely subjective and individual 
(economic). 

Stammler might say that if the science of econo- 
mics thus interpreted is not properly a social science, 
he leaves it on one side, because his object is to 
construct a science which may be fully entitled to 
the name of social economics. But — let us, too, con- 
struct a dilemma ! — this social economics, to which 
he aspires, will either be just economic science ap- 
plied to definite social conditions, in the sense now 
indicated, or it will be a form of historical know- 
ledge . No third thing exists. Ein Drittes ist nicht da ! 

And indeed, for Stammler an economic phenomenon 
is not any single social fact whatever, but a group 
of homogeneous facts, which offer the marks of 
necessity. The number of economic facts required 
to form the group and give rise to an economic 
phenomenon cannot be determined in general ; but 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 45 

can be seen in each case. By the formation of these 
groups, he says, social economics does not degener- 
ate into a register of data concerning fact, nor does 
it become purely mechanical statistics of material 
already given which it has merely to enumerate. 
Social economics should not merely examine into 
the change in the actual working out of one and 
the same social order, but remains, now as formerly, 
the seat of all knowledge of actual social life. It 
must start from the knowledge of a given social 
existence, both in regard to its form and in regard 
to its content ; and enlarge and deepen it up to 
the most minute peculiarity of its actual working 
out, with the accuracy of a technical science, the 
conditions and concrete objects of which are clearly 
indicated ; and thus free the reality of social life 
from every obscurity. Hence it must make for it- 
self a series of concepts, which will serve the pur- 
pose of such an explanation. 

Now this account of the concept of social econo- 
mics is capable of two interpretations. The first is 
that it is intended to describe a science, which has 
indeed for its object (as is proper for sciences) 
necessary connections, in the strict sense of the word. 
But how establish this necessity ? How make the 
concepts suitable to social economics ? Evidently by 
allowing ourselves to be guided by a principle, by 
abstracting a single side from concrete reality ; and 
if it is to be for economics this principle can be 
none other than the economic principle, and social 
economics will consider only the economic side of 



46 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AS 

a given social life. Profits, rent, interest, labour 
value, usury, wages, crises, will then appear as econ- 
omic phenomena necessary under given conditions 
of the social order, through which the economic 
principle exerts its influence. 

The other interpretation is that Stammler's social 
economics does not indeed accomplish the dissolv- 
ing work of analysis but considers this or that 
social life in the concrete. In this case it could do 
nothing but describe a given society. To describe 
does not mean to describe in externals and superfici- 
ally ; but, more accurately, to free that group ot 
facts from every obscurity, showing what it actu- 
ally is, and describing it, as far as possible in its 
naked reality. But this is, in fact, historical know- 
ledge, which may assume varied forms, or rather 
may define in various ways its own subject. It may 
study a society — in all its aspects during a given 
period of time, or at a given moment of its exist- 
ence, or it may even take up one or more aspects 
of social life and study them as they present them- 
selves in different societies and at different times, 
and so on. It is history always, even when it avails 
itself of comparison as an instrument of research. 
And such a study will not have to make concepts^ 
but will take them as it needs them from those 
sciences, which do, in fact, elaborate concepts. 

Thus it would have been of great interest to see 
the working out of this new social economics of Stamm- 
ler a little more clearly, so that we might determine 
exactly in which of the aforesaid two classes it ought 



SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS 47 

to be placed. Whether it is merely political eco- 
nomy in the ordinary sense, or whether it is the 
concrete study of single societies and of groups of 
them. In the latter case Stammler has added an- 
other name or rather two names ; science of the matter 
of social life and social economics , to the many phrases 
by which of late the old History has been disguised 
(social history, history of civilisation, concrete so- 
ciology, comparative sociology, psychology of the 
populace and of the classes, etc.). And the gain, if 
we may be allowed to say so, will not be great. 
September 1898. 



CHAPTER III. CONCERNING THE INTER- 
PRETATION AND CRITICISM OF SOME 
CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 



I 



OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM IN MARx's 
C DAS KAPITAL ' 

Das Kapitalan abstract investigation: His society is not this 
or that society : Treats only of capitalist society : As- 
sumption of equivalence between value and labour : 
Varying views about meaning of this law : Is a 
postulate or standard of comparison : Question as to 
value of this standard: Is not a moral ideal: Treats 
of economic society in so far as is a working society ; 
Shows special way in which problem is solved in capi- 
talist society : Marx's deductions from it. 

Notwithstanding the many expositions, criti- 
cisms, summaries and even abbreviated extracts in 
little works of popular propaganda, which have 
been made of Karl Marx's work, it is far from 
easy, and demands no small effort of philosophical 
and abstract thought, to understand the exact 
nature of the investigation which Marx carried out. 
In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, 
it does not appear that the author himself always 
realised fully the peculiar character of his investi- 



SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 49 

gation, that is to say its theoretical distinctness 
from all other investigations which may be made 
with his economic material ; and, throughout, he 
despised and neglected all such preliminary and 
exact explanations as might have made his task 
plain. Then, moreover, account must be taken of 
the strange composition of the book, a mixture of 
general theory, of bitter controversy and satire, 
and of historical illustrations or digressions, and so 
arranged that only Loria, (fortunate man ! ), can 
declare Das Kapital to be the finest and most sym- 
metrical of existing books ; it being, in reality, un- 
symmetrical, badly arranged and out of proportion, 
sinning against all the laws of good taste ; resem- 
bling in some particulars Vico's Scienza nuova. 
Then too there is the Hegelian phraseology 
beloved by Marx, of which the tradition is now 
lost, and which, even within that tradition he 
adapted with a freedom that at times seems not 
to lack an element of mockery. Hence it is not 
surprising that Das Kapital has been regarded, at 
one time or another, as an economic treatise, as a 
philosophy of history, as a collection of sociological 
laws, so-called, as a moral and political book of 
reference, and even, by some, as a bit of narrative 
history. 

Nevertheless the inquirer wjio asks himself 
what is the method and what the scope of Marx's 
investigation, and puts on one side, of course, all 
the historical, controversial and 1 descriptive por- 
tions (which certainly form an organic part of the 



50 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

book but not of the fundamental investigation), 
can at once reject most of the above-mentioned 
definitions, and decide clearly these two points : 

(i) As regards method, Das Kapital is without 
doubt an abstract investigation ; the capitalist 
society studied by Marx, is not this or that society, 
historically existing, in France or in England, nor 
the modern society of the most civilised nations, 
that of Western Europe and America. It is an 
ideal and formal society, deduced from certain 
hypotheses, which could indeed never have oc- 
curred as actual facts in the course of history. It 
is true that these hypotheses correspond to a great 
extent to the historical conditions of the modern 
civilised world ; but this, although it may establish 
the importance and interest of Marx's investigation 
because the latter helps us to an understanding of 
the workings of the social organisms which closely 
concern us, does not alter its nature. Nowhere in 
the world will Marx's categories be met with as 
living and real existences, simply because they 
are abstract categories, which, in order to live 
must lose some of their qualities and acquire 
others. 

(2) As regards scope, Marx's investigation does 
not cover the whole field of economic fact, nor even 
that one ultimat : and dominant portion, whence 
all economic fac s have their source, like rivers 
flowing from a mountain. It limits itself, on the 
contrary, to one special economic system, that 
which occurs in a. society with private property in 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 51 

capital, or, as Marx says, in the phrase peculiar to 
him, capitalist. There remained untouched, not 
only the other systems which have existed in 
history and are possible in theory, such as monop- 
olist society, or society with collective capital, but 
also the series of economic phenomena common 
to the different societies and to individual econo- 
mics. To sum up, as regards method^ Das Capital 
is not an historical description, and as regards 
scope, it is not an economic treatise, much less an 
encyclopedia. 

But, even when these two points are settled, the 
real essence of Marx's investigation is not yet ex- 
plained. Were Das Capital nothing but what we 
have so far defined, it would be merely an economic 
monograph on the laws of capitalist society. 1 - Such a 
monograph Marx could only have made in one 
way : by deciding on these laws, and explaining 
them by general laws, or by the fundamental con- 
cepts of economics ; by reducing, in short, the 
complex to the simple, or passing, by deductive 
reasoning, and with the addition of fresh hypo- 
theses, from the simple to the complex. He would 
thus have shown, by precise exposition, how the 
apparently most diverse facts of the economic 
world are ultimately governed by one and the 

1 'An immense monograph' (of economics understood) it 
is called by Professor Antonio Labriola, the most notable of 
the Italian Marxians, in his recent book {Discorrendo dijilosophia 
e socialismo, Rome, Loescher, 1898). But in an earlier work {In 
Memoria del '■Manifesto dei Comunisti\ 2nd ed. Rome, 1895, 
p. 36) he defined it as ' a philosophy of history \ 



52 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

same law ; or, what is the same thing, how this law 
is differently refracted as it takes effect through 
different organisations, without changing itself, 
since otherwise the means and indeed the test of the 
explanation would be lacking. Work of this nature 
had been already carried out, to a great extent, in 
Marx's time, and since then it has been developed 
yet further by economists, and has attained a high 
degree of perfection, as may be seen, for instance, 
in the economic treatises of our Italian writers, 
Pantaleoni and Pareto. But I much doubt whether 
Marx would have become an economist in order 
to devote himself to a species of research of almost 
solely theoretical, or even scholastic, interest. His 
whole personality as a practical man and a revolu- 
tionist, impatient of abstract investigation which 
had no close connection with the interests of actual 
life, would have recoiled from such a course. If 
Das Y^apital was to have been merely an economic 
monograph, it would be safe to wager that it would 
never have come into existence. 

What then did Marx accomplish, and to what 
treatment did he subject the phenomena of capit- 
alist society, if not to that of pure economic 
theory ? Marx assumed^ outside the field of pure 
economic theory ', a proposition ; the famous equivalence 
between value and labour ; i.e. the proposition that the 
value of the commodities produced by labour is equal to 
the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce them. 
It is only with this assumption that his special 
investigation begins. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 53 

But what connection has this proposition with 
the laws of capitalist society ? or what part does 
it play in the investigation? This Marx never 
explicitly states ; and it is on this point that the 
greatest confusions have arisen, and that the 
interpreters and critics have been most at a 
loss. 

Some of them have explained the law of labour- 
value as an historical law, peculiar to capitalist 
society, all of whose manifestions it determines ; x 
others rightly seeing that the manifestations of 
capitalist society are by no means determined by 
such a law, but comply with the general economic 
motives characteristic of the economic nature of 
man, have rejected the law as an absurdity at which 
Marx arrived by pressing to its extreme conse- 
quences an unfortunate concept of Ricardo. 

Criticism was thus bewildered between entire 
acceptance, combined with a clearly erroneous 
interpretation, and entire and summary rejection 
of Marx's treatment ; until, in recent years, and 
especially after the appearance of the third and pos- 
thumous volume of Das Kapital^ it began to seek 
out and follow a better path. In truth, despite its 
eager defenders, the Marxian doctrine has always 
remained obscure ; and, despite contemptuous and 



1 I leave out those who regard the law of labour-value as 
the general law of value. The refutation is obvious. How could 
it ever be ' general ' when it leaves out of account a whole 
category of economic goods, that is the goods which cannot be 
increased by labour \ 



54 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

summary condemnation, it has always displayed 
also an obstinate vitality not usually possessed by 
nonsense and sophistry. For this reason it is to the 
credit of Professor Werner Sombart, of Breslau 
University, that he has declared, in one of his 
lucid writings, that Marx's practical conclusions 
may be refuted from a political standpoint, but 
that, scientifically, it is above all important to 
understand his ideas. 1 

Sombart, then, breaking openly with the inter- 
pretation of Marx's law of value as a real law of 
economic phenomena, and giving a fuller, and I 
may say, a bolder expression to the timid opinions 
already stated by another (C. Schmidt), says, that 
Marx's law of value is not an empirical but a concep- 
tual fact (Keine empirische, sondern eine gedan- 
kliche Thatsache) ; that Marx's value is a logical 
fact (eine logische Thatsache), which aids our 
thought in understanding the actual realities of 
economic life. 2 

This interpretation, in its general sense, was 
accepted by Engels, in an article written some 
months before his death and published posthum- 
ously. To Engels it appeared that c it could not 
be condemned as inaccurate, but that, nevertheless, 

1 Werner Sombart : Zur Kritik des oekonomischer Systems von 
Karl Marx (in the Jirchiv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik 
Vol. vn, 1894, pp. 555-594). I have not by me the criticism 
(from the Hedonistic point of view) of this article by Sombart — 
on the third volume of Das Kapital — made last year by Bohm 
Bawerk in the Miscellany in honour of Knies. 

2 Loc. cit., p. 5 7 1 , */ seq. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 5 5 

it was too vague and might be expressed with 
greater precision.' * 

The acute and courteous remarks on the theory 
of value, published lately in an article in the 
Journal des Economistes by an able French Marxian, 
Sorel, indicate a movement in the same direction. 
In these remarks he acknowleges that there is no 
way of passing from Marx's theory to actual 
phenomena of economic life, and that, although 
it may oifer elucidation, in a somewhat limited 
sense, it does not appear further that it could 
ever explain, in the scientific meaning of the 
word. 2 

And now too Professor Labriola, in a hasty glance 
at the same subject, referring clearly to Sombart, 
and partly agreeing and partly criticising, writes : 
c the theory of value does not denote an empirical 
factum nor does it express a merely logical proposi- 
tion, as some have imagined ; but it is the typical 
premise without which all the rest would be un- 
thinkable.' 3 

Labriola's phrase appears to me, in fact, somewhat 
more accurate than Sombart's ; who, moreover, 
shows himself dissatisfied with his own term, like 
someone who has not yet a quite definite concept 
in view, and hence cannot find a satisfactory phrase. 

1 In the Neue Zeit xiv. vol. i, pp. 4-1 1, 37-44, 1 quote from 
the Italian translation : Dal terzo volume del ' Capitate] preface 
and notes by F. Engels, Rome 1896, p. 39. 

2 Sur la theorie ZMarxiste de la valeur (in the Journal des 
Economistes, number for March 1897, pp. 222-31, see p, 228). 

3 Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, p. 21. 



5 6 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

c Conceptual fact, 1 c logical fact" expresses much too 
little since it is evident that all sciences are inter- 
woven from logical facts, that is from concepts. 
Marx's labour-value is not only a logical generalisa- 
tion, it is also a fact conceived and postulated as 
typical, i.e. something more than a mere logical 
concept. Indeed it has not the inertia of the abstract 
but the force of a concrete fact, 1 which has in 
regard to capitalist society, in Marx's investigation, 
the function of a term of comparison, of a standard, 
of a type? 

This standard or type being postulated, the 
investigation, for Marx, takes the following form. 
Granted that value is equal to the labour socially 
necessary, it is required to show with what diverg- 
encies from this standard the prices of commodities are 
fixed in capitalist society, and how labour-power 
itself acquires a price and becomes a commodity. 
To speak plainly, Marx stated the problem in un- 
appropriate language ; he represented this typical 
value itself, postulated by him as a standard, as 
being the law governing the economic phenomena 
of capitalist society. And it is the law, if he likes, 

1 It must be carefully noticed that what I call a concrete fact 
may still not be a fact which is empirically real, but a fact 
made by us hypothetically and entirely imaginary, or a fact 
partially empirical, i.e. existing partially in empirical reality. We 
shall see later on that Marx's typical premise belongs properly 
to this second class. 

2 I accept the term employed by Labriola so much the more 
readily since it is the same as that used by me a year ago. See 
Essay on Loria {Materialismio Storico, pp. 48-50). 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 57 

but in the sphere of his conceptions^ not in economic 
reality. We may conceive the divergencies from a 
standard as the revolt of reality when confronted 
by this standard which we have endowed with the 
dignity of law. 

From a formal point of view there is nothing 
absurd about the investigation undertaken by 
Marx. It is a usual method of scientific analysis to 
regard a phenomenon not only as it exists, but also 
as it would be if one of its factors were altered, 
and, in comparing the hypothetical with the real 
phenomenon, to conceive the first as diverging 
from the second, which is postulated as funda- 
mental, or the second as diverging from the first, 
which is postulated in the same manner. If I build 
up by deductive reasoning the moral rules which 
develop in two social groups which are at war one 
against another, and if I show how they differ from 
the moral rules which develop in a state of peace, 
I should be making something analogous to the 
comparison worked out by Marx. Nor would there 
be great harm (although the expression would be 
neither fortunate nor accurate) in saying, in a 
figurative sense, that the law of the moral rules in 
time of war is the same as that of the rules in 
time of peace, modified to the new conditions, and 
altered in a way which seems, ultimately, incon- 
sistent with itself. As long as he confines himself 
to the limits of his hypothesis Marx proceeds 
quite correctly. Error could come in only when he 
or others confuse the hypothetical with the real, 



58 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

and the manner of conceiving and of judging with 
that of existing. As long as this mistake is avoided, 
the method is unassailable. 

But the formal justification is insufficient : we 
need another. With a formally correct method 
results may be obtained which are meaningless and 
unimportant, or mere mental tricks may be per- 
formed. To set up an arbitrary standard of com- 
parison, to compare, and deduce, and to end by 
establishing a series of divergencies from this 
standard ; to what will this lead ? It is then, the 
standard itself which needs justification : i.e. we 
need to decide what meaning and importance it 
may have for us. 

This question too, although not stated exactly in 
this way, has occurred to Marx's critics ; and an 
answer to it has been already given some time ago 
and by many, by saying that the equivalence of 
value and labour is an ideal of social ethics, a moral 
ideal. But nothing could be imagined more mis- 
taken in itself and farther from Marx's thought 
than this interpretation. What moral inference can 
ever be drawn from the premiss that value is 
equal to the labour socially necessary ? If we reflect 
a little, absolutely none. The establishment of this 
fact tells us nothing about the needs of the society, 
which needs will make necessary one or another 
ethical-legal system of property and of methods 
of distribution. Value may certainly equal labour, 
nevertheless special historical conditions will make 
necessary society organised in castes or in classes, 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 59 

divided into governing and governed, rulers and 
ruled ; with a resulting unequal distribution of the 
products of labour. Value may certainly equal 
labour ; but even supposing that fresh historical 
conditions ever make possible the disappearance 
of society organised in classes and the advent of 
a communistic society, and even supposing that in 
this society distribution could take place according 
to the quantity of labour contributed by each 
person, this distribution would still not be a 
deduction from the established equivalence between 
value and labour, but a standard adopted for special 
reasons of social convenience. 1 Nor can it be said 
that such an equivalence supplies in itself an idea 
of perfect justice (even though unrealisable), since 
the criterion of justice has no relation to the differ- 
ence often due to purely natural causes, in the 
ability to do more or less social labour and to 
produce a greater or smaller value. Thus neither 
a rule of abstract justice nor one of convenience 
and social utility can be derived from the equiva- 
lence between value and labour. Rules of either 
kind can only be based on consideration of a quite 
different grade from that of a simple economic 
equation. 

1 In making an hypothesis of this nature, Marx distinguished 
clearly that, in such a case, • labour-time would serve a double 
purpose : on the one hand as standard of value, on the other 
as a standard of the individual share reckoned to each producer 
in the common labour ' {andrerseits dient die Arbeitxeit zuglekh 
als Mass des individuellen Antheils des Producenten an der 
Gemeinarbeit, und daher auch an dem individuell verxehbaren Thell 
des Gemein products) : See Das Kapital I, p. 45. 



60 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

Sombart, avoiding this vulgar confusion, has 
been better advised in looking for the meaning of 
the standard set up by Marx in the nature of 
society itself, and apart from our moral judgments. 
Thus he says that labour is the economic fact of 
greater objective importance, and that value, in Marx's 
view, is nothing c if not the economic expression 
of the fact of the socially productive power of 
labour, as the basis of economic existence.' 

But this investigation appears to me to be 
merely begun and not yet worked out to a 
conclusion ; and if I might suggest wherein it 
needs completion, I should remark that it is 
necesary to attempt to give clearness and pre- 
cision to this word objective, which is either am- 
biguous or metaphorical. What is meant by an 
economically objective fact ? Do not these words 
suggest rather a mere presentiment of a concept 
instead of the distinct vision of this concept itself? 

I will add, merely tentatively, that the word 
objective (whose correlative term is subjective) does 
not seem to be in place here. Let us, instead, take 
account, in a society, only of what is properly 
economic life, i.e. out of the whole society, only of 
economic society. Let us abstract from this latter all 
goods which cannot be increased by labour. Let 
us abstract further all class distinctions, which may 
be regarded as accidental in reference to the general 
concept of economic society. Let us leave out of 
account all modes of distributing the wealth pro- 
duced, which, as we have said, can only be deter- 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 61 

mined on grounds of convenience or perhaps of 
justice, but in any case upon considerations belong- 
ing to society as a whole, and never from consider- 
tions belonging exclusively to economic society. 
What is left after these successive abstractions have 
been made ? Nothing but economic society in so far as it 
is a working society. 1 And in this society without 
class distinctions, i.e. in an economic society as such 
and whose only commodities are the products of 
labour, what can value be ? Obviously the sum of 
the efforts, i.e. the quantity of labour, which the 
production of the various kinds of commodities 
demands. And, since we are here speaking of the 
economic social organism, and not of the in- 
dividual persons living in it, it follows that this 
labour cannot be reckoned except by averages, 
and hence as labour socially (it is with society, 1 
repeat, that we are here dealing) necessary. 

Thus labour-value would appear as that deter- 
mination of value peculiar to economic society as 
such, when regarded only in so far as it produces 
commodities capable of being increased by labour. 

From this definition the following corrollary 

may be drawn : the^ determination of labour value 

will have a positive conformity with facts as long as a 

society exists , which produces goods by means of labour. 

It is evident that in the imaginary county of 

Cocaigne this determination would have no con- 

1 This is a different thing from the workmen or operatives 
in our capitalist society, who form a class, i.e. a portion of 
economic society and not economic society in general and in 
the abstract, producing goods which can be increased by labour. 



62 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

formity with facts, since all goods would exist in 
quantities exceeding the demand ; similarly it is 
also evident that the same determination could not 
take effect in a society in which goods were in- 
adequate to the demand, but could not be increased 
by labour. 

But hitherto history has shown us only societies 
which, in addition to the enjoyment of goods 
not increasable by labour, have satisfied their 
needs by labour. Hence this equivalence between 
value and labour has hitherto had and will con- 
tinue for an indefinite time to have, a con- 
formity with facts ; but, of what kind is this 
conformity? Having ruled out (i) that it is a 
question of amoral ideal, and (2) that it is a question 
of scientific law ; and having nevertheless con- 
cluded that this equivalence is 2^. fact (which Marx 
uses as a type), we are obliged to say, as the only 
alternative, that it is a fact, but a fact which exists in 
the midst of other facts ; i.e. a fact that appears to us 
empirically as opposed, limited, distorted by other facts, 
almost like a force amongst other forces, which pro- 
duces a resultant different from what it would 
produce if the other forces ceased to act. It is not 
a completely dominant fact but neither is it non-existent 
and merely imaginary. 1 

1 It may be doubted whether this general application of 
labour-value to every working economic society was included 
in the ideas of Marx and Engels, when the numerous passages 
are recalled in which one or other has declared many times 
that in the future communistic society the criterion of value will 
disappear and production will be based on social utility, cf Engels as 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 63 

It is still necessary to remark that in the course 
of history this fact has undergone various altera- 
tions, i.e., has been more or less obscured ; and 
here it is proper to do justice to Engels' remark 
in reference to Sombart ; that as regards the way 
in which the latter defines the law of value c he 
does not bring out the full importance which this 
law possesses during the stages of economic de- 
velopment in which it is supreme/ Engels makes 
a digression into the field of economic history to 
show that Marx's law of value, i.e. the equivalence 
between value and the labour socially necessary, 
has been supreme for several thousand years. 1 
Supreme is too strong a term ; but it is true that 
the opposed influences of other facts to this law 
have been fewer in number and less intense under 
primitive communism and under mediaeval and 
domestic economic conditions, whilst they have 
reached a maximum in the society based on priv- 

early as in the Umrisse 1 844, (Italian translation in Critica sociale 
a. v. 1895) Marx> Misere de la phllosophie, 2nd ed. Paris, 
Giard et Briere. 1896, p. 83 ; Engels Antidiihring, p. 335. 
But this must be understood in the sense that, not being a 
hypothetical communistic society based on exchange, the 
function of value (in exchange) would lose, according to them, 
its practical importance ; but not in the other sense that in 
the opinion of the communistic society the value of goods 
would no longer equal the labour which they cost to society. 
Because even in such a system of economic organisation, value- 
labour would be the economic law which entirely governed 
the valuation of individual commodities, produced by labour. 
There would be that clearness of valuation which Marx 
describes in his Robinsonia, cf. Das Kapital, p. 43. 
1 Dal terzo volume del i GapitaleJ pp. 42-55. 



64 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

ately owned capital and more or less free universal 
competition, i.e. in the society which produces 
almost exclusively commodities. 1 

Marx, then, in postulating as typical the equival- 
ence between value and labour and in applying it 
to capitalist society, was, as it were, making a com- 
parison between capitalist society and a part of it- 
self, isolated and raised up to an independent 
existence : i.e. a comparison between capitalist 
society and economic society as such (but only in 
so far as it is a working society). In other words, 
he was studying the social problem of labour and 
was showing by the test implicitly established by 
him, the special way in which this problem is solved 
in capitalist society. This is the justification, no longer 
formal but real, of his method. 

It was in virtue of this method, and by the light 
thrown by the type which he postulated, that 
Marx was able to discover and define the social 
origin of profit, i.e. of surplus value. Surplus value 
in pure economics is a meaningless word, as is 
evident from the term itself ; since a surplus value 
is an extra value, and thus falls outside the sphere 

1 Hence also Marx in §4 of Chap. I. : Der Fetischcharakter 
der Waare und sein Geheimniss (I. pp. 37-50) gave a brief out- 
line of the other economic systems of mediaeval society, and of 
the domestic system : * Aller Mysticismus der Waarenwelt, all 
derZauber und Spuk,welcher Arbeitsprodukteauf grundlageder 
Waarenproduktion umnebelt, verschwindet daher sofort, sobal 
wir zu anderen Producktions formen fliichten (p. 42). The 
relation between value and labour appears more clearly in the 
less complex economic systems, because less opposed and ob- 
scured by other facts. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 6$ 

of pure economics. But it rightly has meaning and 
is no absurdity, as a concept of difference^ in compar- 
ing one economic society with another, one fact 
with another, or two hypotheses with one another. 

It is also in virtue of the same premise that he 
was able to arrive at the proposition : that the pro- 
ducts of labour in a capitalist society do not sell, 
unless by exception, for their value, but usually 
for more or less, and sometimes with great de- 
viations from their value ; which is to say, to put 
it shortly, value does not coincide with price. Sup- 
pose, by hypothesis the organisation of produc- 
tion were suddenly changed from a capitalist to a 
communistic system, we should see at once, not 
only that alteration in the fortunes of men which 
appeals so much to popular imagination, but also 
a more remarkable change : a change in the fortunes 
of things. A scale of valuation of goods would 
then fashion itself, very different for the most 
part, from that which now exists. The way in which 
Marx proves this proposition, by an analysis of 
the different components of the capital employed 
in different industries, i.e. of the proportion of 
fixed capital (machines, etc.) and of floating capital 
(wages), need not be explained here in detail. 

And, in the same way, i.e. by proving that fixed 
capital increases continually in comparison with 
floating capital, Marx tries to establish another law 
of capitalist society, the law of the tendency of the 
rate of profits to fall. Technical improvement, which 
in an abstract economic society would show itself 



66 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

in the decreased labour required to produce the 
same wealth, shows itself in capitalist society in a 
gradual decline in the rate of profits. 1 But this 
section of Volume III of Das Kapital is one of 
the least developed in this little worked-out pos- 
thumous book ; and it seems to me to be worth 
a special critical essay, which I hope to write at 
another time, not wishing to treat the subject here 
incidentally. 2 

II 

MARX'S PROBLEM AND PURE ECONOMICS 
(GENERAL ECONOMIC SCIENCE) 

Marxian economics not general economic science and labour- 
value not a general concept of value ; EngeVs rejection of 
general economic law : abstract concepts used by Marx 
are concepts of pure economics : relation of economic psy- 
chology to pure economics : pure economics does not destroy 
history or progress. 

Marxian economics is thus a study of abstract 
working society showing the variations which this 
undergoes in the different social economic organi- 

1 Das Kapital, Book III., sec. III., Chaps, xm., xiv., xv., 
Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der Profitrate (vol. iii., Part I, pp. 
191-249). 

2 The task of Marx's followers ought to be to free his 
thought from the literary form which he adopts, to study again 
the questions which he propounds, and to work them out with 
new and more accurate statements, and with fresh historical 
illustrations. In this alone can scientific progress consist. The 
expositions made hitherto of Marx's system, are merely materials-, 
and some (like Aveling's) consist entirely in a series of little 
summaries, which follow the original chapter by chapter and 
prove even more obscure. For the law of the fall in the rate 
of profits, see below, chap. V. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 67 

sations. This investigation Marx carried out only 
in reference to one of these organisations, i.e. the 
capitalist ; contenting himself with mere hints 
in regard to the slave and serf organisations, 
primitive communism, the domestic system and to 
savage conditions. 1 

In this sense he and Engels declared that econo- 
mics (the economics studied by them), was an 
historical science. 2 But here, too, their definition 
has been less happy than the investigation itself ; 
we know that Marx's researches are not historical, 
but hypothetical and abstract, i.e. theoretical. 3 They 
might better be called researches into sociological 
economics, if the word sociological were not one which 
is employed most variously and arbitrarily. 

1 'To follow out completely this criticism of bourgeois 
economics a knowledge of the capitalist form of production, ex- 
change and distribution is not alone adequate. We ought simi- 
larly to study at least in their essential features and taken as 
terms of comparison, the other forms which have preceded it 
in time, or exist alongside of it in less developed countries. 
Such an investigation and comparison has hitherto been briefly 
expounded only by Marx ; and we owe almost entirely to his 
researches what we know about pre-bourgeois theoretical econo- 
mics.' (Engels, Antiduhring, p. 154). This was written by 
Engels twenty years ago ; and since then the literature of 
economic history has grown remarkably, but historical research 
has been seldom accompanied by theoretical research. 

2 * Political economy is essentially an historical science.' 
(Engels, I.e., p. 150). 

3 What is strange is that Engels (in the passage quoted in 
the penultimate note) says himself most truly that Marx has 
written theoretical economics, nevertheless in the sentence quoted 
in the last note (which appears in the same book and on the 
same page) he states definitely that economics in the Marxian 
sense is nothing but an historical science. 



68 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

If Marx's investigation is thus limited, if the 
law of value postulated by him is the special law 
of an abstract working society, which only partially 
takes effect in economic society as given in history, 
and in other hypothetical or possible economic 
societies, the following results seem to follow evi- 
dently and readily : (i) That Marxian economics 
is not general economic science ; (2) that labour-value 
is not a general concept of value. Alongside, then, or 
the Marxian investigation, there can, or rather 
must, exist and flourish a general economic science, 
which may determine a concept of value, deducing 
it from quite different and more comprehensive 
principles than the special ones of Marx. And, if 
the pure economists, confined to their own special 
province, have been wrong to show an ungenerous 
intellectual dislike for Marx's investigations, his 
followers, in their turn, have been wrong to regard 
ungratefully a branch of research which was alien 
to them, calling it now useless, and now frankly 
absurd. 

Such is, in effect, my opinion, and I freely ac- 
knowledge that I have never been able to discover 
other antithesis or enmity between these two 
branches of research except the purely accidental 
one of the mutual antipathy to and mental ignor- 
ance of each other, of two groups of students. Some 
have resorted to a political explanation ; but, with 
no wish to deny that political prepossessions are 
often the causes of theoretical errors, I do not 
consider an explanation as adequate and appropri- 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 69 

ate, which resolves itself into accusing a large 
number of students of allowing themselves blindly 
and foolishly to be overcome by passions alien to 
science ; or, what is worse, of knowingly falsifying 
their thought and constructing a whole economic 
system from motives of practical opportunism. 

Indeed Marx himself had not the time or means 
to adopt an attitude, so to speak, towards the 
purists, or the hedonists, or the utilitarians, or the 
deductive or Austrian school, or whatever else they 
may call themselves. But he had the greatest con- 
tempt for the oeconomia vulgaris, under which term 
he was wont to include also the researches of 
general economics, which explain what needs no 
explanation and is intuitively evident, and leave 
unexplained what is more difficult and of genuine 
interest. Nor has Engels discussed the subject ; 
but an indication of his opinion may be found in 
his attack on Diihring. Diihring was struggling to 
find a general law of value, which should govern 
all possible types of economic organisation ; and 
Engels refuted him : c Anyone who wishes to bring 
under the same law the political economy of Terra 
del Fuoco and that of modern England, can pro- 
duce nothing; but the vulgarest commonplaces.' 
He scorns the truth of ultimate instance, the eter- 
nal laws of value, the tautologous and empty axioms 
which Herr Diihring would have produced by his 
method. 1 Fixed and eternal laws are non-existent : 
there is then no possibility of constructing a general 
1 Antidiihring, pp. 150, 155. 



70 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

science of economics, valid for all times and in all 
places. If Engels had meant to refer to those who 
affirm the eternity and inevitability of the laws 
characteristic of capitalist society, he would have 
been justified ; and would have been aiming his 
blows at a prejudice which history alone suffices 
to refute, by showing as it does, how capitalism 
has appeared at different times, replacing other 
types of economic organisation, and has also dis- 
appeared, replaced by other types. But in Duhring's 
case the criticism was much beside the mark ; since 
Diihring did not indeed mean to set up the laws 
of capitalist society as fixed and eternal ; but to 
determine a general concept of 'value ', which is quite 
another matter : or, in other words, to show how, 
from a purely economic point of view ^ capitalist society 
is explained by the same general concepts as explain 
the other types of organisation. No effort, not even 
that of Engels, will suffice to stop such a problem 
from being stated and solved ; unless it were 
possible to destroy the human intellect, which, in 
addition to particular facts, recognises universal 
concepts. 

It would be instructive to examine the references 
which there are in Marx's Das Kapitalto unfinished 
analyses, extraneous to his special method ; for in 
this dependence on analysis the researches of pure 
economics have their origin. What is, for instance, 
abstract human labour (abstrakt menschliche Arbeit) a 
concept which Marx uses like a postulate ? By what 
method is that reduction of complex to simple labour 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 71 

accomplished, to which he refers as to an obvious j 
and ordinary matter ? And if, in Marx's hypothesis, 
commodities appear as congealed labour, or crystalised 
labour, why by another hypothesis, should not all 
economic goods and not only commodities, appear 
as congealed methods of satisfying needs or as crystalised 
needs ? I read at one point in Das Kapital : c Things 
which in themselves are not commodities, e.g. 
knowledge, honour, etc., may be sold by their 
owners ; and thus, by means of their price, acquire 
the form of commodities. A thing may formally 
have a price without having a value. The expres- 
sion of the price here becomes imaginary like certain 
quantities in mathematics.' x Here is yet another 
difficulty, indicated but not overcome. Where are 
these formal or imaginary prices to be found ? And 
what are they ? By what laws are they governed ? 
Or are they perhaps like the Greek words in Latin 
prosody, which according to the school rule, per 
Ausoniae fines sine lege vagantur? — Questions of 
this kind are answered by the researches of pure 
economics. 

The philosopher Lange also, who rejected 
Marx's law of value, which he regarded as an ex- 
travagant production, a child of sorrow, thinking it 
unsuitable — and in this he was justified, as a 
general law of value, arrived at the solutions which 
have since been given of the latter, a long time 
before the researches of the purists came into 
blossom. c Some years ago,' he wrote in his book 
1 Das Kapital, I, p. 67. 



72 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

on labour problems, c I too worked at a new theory 
of value, which should be of such a character as to show 
the most extreme cases of variation in value as special 
cases of the same formula? And, whilst adding that 
he had not completed it, he intimated that the 
course which he attempted was the same as that 
hastily glanced at by Jevons in his Theory of political 
economy ', published in 1871. 1 

To any of the more cautious and moderate 
Marxians it is plainly evident that the researches 
of the Hedonists are not merely to be rejected as 
erroneous or unfounded ; and hence an attempt 
has been made to vindicate them in reference to 
the Marxian doctrine as an economic psychology^ 
having its place alongside of true economics itself. 
But this definition contains a curious equivocation. 
Pure economics is quite apart from psychology. 
Indeed, to begin with, it is hard to fix the mean- 
ing of the words economic psychology. The science of 
psychology is divided into formal and descriptive. 
In formal psychology there is no place either for 
economic fact nor for any other fact which may 
represent a particular content. In descriptive 
psychology, it is true, are included representations, 
sentiments and desires of an economic content, but 
included as they appear in reality, mixed with the 
other psychical phenomena of different content, and 

1 F. A. Lange, Die A r better fr age, 5th ed., Winterthur, 1894, 
(the author's last revision was in 1874) see p. 332 ; cf. p. 248 
and on p. 124, the quotation from Gossen's book, then very 
little known. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 73 

inseparable from them. Thus descriptive economic 
psychology can be, at most, an approximate limita- 
tion, by which we take as a subject of special 
description the way in which men (at a given time 
and place, or even in the mass as hitherto they 
have appeared in history) think, feel and desire in 
respect to a certain class of goods which are usually 
called material or economic, and which, however, 
stand in need of specification and definition. 
Subject-matter, in truth, better suited to history 
than to science, which regards such matters only 
as empty and unimportant generalisations. This 
may be seen in the long discussion of the matter 
by that most weighty of pedants, Wagner, in his 
manual, which, of all that has been written on the 
question, I think the most worthy of notice, and 
which is yet, in itself, a thing very little worthy of 
notice or conclusive. 1 An enumeration and de- 
scription of the various tendencies which exist in 
men as they appear in ordinary life : egoistical and 
altruistic tendencies, love of self-advantage and 
fear of disadvantage, fear of punishment and hope 
of reward, sense of honour and fear of disgrace 
and public contempt, love of activity and dislike 
of idleness, feeling of reverence for the moral 
code, etc., this is what Wagner calls economic 
psychology ; and which might better be called : 
various observations in descriptive psychology, to be 

1 Adolf Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen cekonomie, 3rd 
Ed., Leipzig, 1892, vol. 1, pt. 1 ; Bk. I, ch. i. Die Wirthschaft- 
liche Natur des Menschen, pp. 70-137. 



74 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

kept in mind whilst studying the practical questions of 
economics? 

But what, pray, has pure economics in common 
with psychology ? The purists start from the 
hedonistic postulate, i.e. from the economic nature 
itself of man, and deduce from it the concepts of 
utility {economic utility which Pareto has proposed 
to call by a special name, ofelimita, from the Greek 
uxpeXi/uLos) of value, and directly, all the other 
special laws in accordance with which man behaves 
in so far as he is an abstract homo oeconomicus. They 
do exactly what the science of ethics does with the 
moral nature ; and the science of logic with the 
logical nature ; and so on. At this rate then would 
ethics be a psychology of ethics and logic a psychology 

1 I may be allowed to remark that in similar discussions, 
economists usually make the serious mistake of making the concept 
economic coincide with the concept egoistic. But the economic is an 
independent sphere of human activity, in addition to all the 
others, such as the spheres of ethics, aesthetics, logic, etc. The 
moral goods and the satisfaction of the higher moral needs of man, 
just because they are goods, and needs, are taken into account in 
economics, but still only as goods and needs^ not as moral or im- 
moral, egoistic or altruistic. In like manner, a manifestation (by 
words or by any other means of expression) is taken into ac- 
count in aesthetics ; but only as a manifestation not as true, jalse, 
moral, immoral, useful, harmful, etc. Economists are still impressed 
by the fact that Adam Smith wrote one book of theory and of 
ethics, and another of economic theory ; which may interpret 
to mean that one dealt with a theory of altruistic facts and the 
other with one of egoistic facts. But if this had been so, Adam 
Smith would have discussed, in both of his chief works, facts 
of an ethical character, estimable or reprehensible ; and would 
not have been an economist at all ; a ridiculous conclusion 
which is a reductio ad absurdum of the identification of economic 
action with egoism. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 75 

of logic ? And, since all that we know passes through 
the human mind, ontology would be a psychology of 
existence^ mathematics a psychology of mathematics , 
and we should thus have confused the most 
diverse things, ending in a disorder the aim of 
which would be no longer comprehensible. Hence 
we conclude, that with care and the exercise of a 
little thought, it will necessarily be agreed that 
pure economics is not a psychology, but is the 
true and essential general science of economic facts. 

Professor Labriola, too, shows a certain ill- 
humour which does not seem to me entirely 
justified, towards the pure economists, c who', he 
says, c translate into psychological conceptualism the 
influence of risk and other analogous considerations 
of ordinary commercial practice ! And they do 
well — I answer — because the mind desires to give 
an account even of the influences of risk and of 
commercial practice, and to explain their mechanism 
and character. And then, psychological conceptualism ; 
is not this an unfortunate connection between what 
your intellect shows you that pure economics really 
is (science which takes as its starting point an irre- 
ducible concept), and that hazardous definition of 
psychology which has been criticised above ? Are 
not the noun and adjective in opposition to one 
another ? And further, Labriola speaks contemptu- 
ously of the c abstract atomism ' of the hedonists, in 
which, ' one no longer knows what history is, and 
progress is reduced to mere appearance.' x Here 
1 Discorrendo di socialismo e di files ophia, 1. vi. 



j6 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

too, it does not seem to me that his contempt is 
justified ; for Labriola is well aware that in all 
abstract sciences, concrete and individual things 
disappear and that their elements alone remain as 
objects to be considered : hence this cannot be 
made a ground for special complaint against 
economic science. But history and p? ogress, even if 
they are alien to the study of abstract economics, 
do not therefore cease to exist and to form the 
subject of other studies of the human mind ; and 
this is what matters. 

For my part I hold firmly to the economic 
notion of the hedonistic guide, toutility-ophelimity, 
to final utility, and even to the explanation (econ- 
omic) of interest on capital as arising from the 
different degrees of utility possessed by present and 
future goods. But this does not satisfy the desire for 
a sociological, so to speak, elucidation of interest, on 
capital ; and this elucidation, with others of the same 
kind, can only be obtained from the comparative 
considerations put before us by Marx. 1 

1 It is strange how among the students of pure economics 
also this need for a different treatment makes itself felt, leading 
them to contradictory statements and to insuperable perplexities. 
Pantaleoni, Principi dieconomia pura, Florence, Barbera, 1889, 
p. 3, Ch. iii § 3 (pp. 299-302), contradicts Bohm-Bawerk, 
inquiring whence the borrower of capital at interest is able to 
find the wherewithal to pay the interest. Pareto, Introd. critica 
agli Estratti del Capitate del £Marx, Ital. trans. Palermo, 
Sandron, 1894, p. xxx, n. : 'The phenomena of surplus value 
contradicts Marx's theory which determines values solely by 
labour. But, on the other hand, there is an expropriation of the kind 
which Marx condemns. It is not at all proved that this expro- 
priation helps to secure the hedonistic maximum. But it is a 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 77 

III 

CONCERNING THE LIMITATION OF THE MATERIAL- 
ISTIC THEORY OF HISTORY 

Historical materialism a canon of historical interpretation ; 
Canon does not imply anticipation of results : Question 
as to how Marx and Engels understood it ; Difficulty 
of ascertaining correctly and method of doing so ; How 
Marxians understand it : Their metaphysical tendency ; 
Instances of confusion of concepts in their writings : 
Historical materialism has not a special philosophy im- 
manent within it. 

Historical materialism if it is to express some- 
thing critically acceptable, can, as I have had 
occasion to state elsewhere, 1 be neither a new a 
priori notion of the philosophy of history, nor a 
new method of historical thought ; it must be 
simply a canon of historical interpretation. This 
canon recommends that attention be directed to 
the so-called economic basis of society, in order 
that the forms and mutations of the latter may 
be better understood. 

The concept canon ought not to raise difficulty, 
especially when it is remembered that it implies no 
anticipation of results^ but only an aid in seeking 

difficult problem how to avoid this expropriation.'' A learned and 
accurate Italian work which attempts to reconcile the opinions 
of the hedonistic school with those of the followers of Ricardo 
and Marx, is the memorandum of Prof. G. Ricca Salermo, 
La theoria del valor e nella storia delle dottrine e dei fatti economici, 
Rome 1894. (extr. from the Memorie dei Lincei, s. v. vol. i., 
pt. i.) 

1 See above, chap. I. 



78 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

for them ; and is entirely of empirical origin. 
When the critic of the text of Dante's Comedia 
uses Witte's well-known canon, which runs : c the 
difficult reading is to be preferred to the easy oneJ he 
is quite aware that he possesses a mere instrument, 
which may be useful to him in many cases, useless 
in others, and whose correct and advantageous em- 
ployment depends entirely on his caution. In like 
manner and with like meaning it must be said that 
historical materialism is a mere canon ; although 
it be in truth a canon most rich in suggestion. 

But was it in this way that Marx and Engels 
understood it ? and is it in this way that Marx's 
followers usually understand it ? 

Let us begin with the first question. Truly a 
difficult one, and offering a multiplicity of diffi- 
culties. The first of these arises so to speak, from 
the nature of the sources. The doctrine of historical 
materialism is not embodied in a classical and 
definite book by those authors, with whom it is as 
it were identified ; so that, to discuss that book 
and to discuss the doctrine might seem all one 
thing. On the contrary it is scattered through a 
series of writings, composed in the course of half 
a century, at long intervals, where only the most 
casual mention is made of it, and where it is some- 
times merely understood or implied. Anyone who 
desired to reconcile all the forms with which 
Marx's and Engels have endowed it, would 
stumble upon contradictory expressions, which 
would make it impossible for the careful and 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 79 

methodical interpreter to decide what, on the 
whole, historical materialism meant for them. 

Another difficulty arises in regard to the weight 
to be attached to their expressions. I do not think 
that there has yet been a study of what might be 
called Marx's forma mentis ; with which Engels 
had something in common, partly owing to con- 
geniality, partly owing to imitation or influence. 
Marx, as has been already remarked, had a 
kind of abhorrence for researches of purely schol- 
astic interest. Eager for knowledge of things (I say, 
of concrete and individual things) he attached little 
weight to discussions of concepts and the forms of 
concepts ; this sometimes degenerated into an ex- 
aggeration in his own concepts. Thus we find in 
him a curious opposition between statements 
which, interpreted strictly, are erroneous ; and 
yet appear to us, and indeed are, loaded and 
pregnant with truth. Marx was addicted, in short, 
to a kind of concrete logic? Is it best then to inter- 
pret his expressions literally, running the risk of 
giving them a meaning different from what they 
actually bore in the writer's inmost thoughts ? Or 
is it best to interpret them broadly, running the 
opposite risk of giving them a meaning, theoretic- 
ally perhaps more acceptable, but historically less 
true ? 

1 The over-abused Diihring was not mistaken when he re- 
marked that in Marx's works expressions occur frequently 
* which appear to be universal without being actually so ' 
(Allgemein aussehen ohne es zu sein). Kritische Geschichte der 
N ationalofynomie und des Socialisms, Berlin, 1871, p. 527. 



80 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

The same difficulty certainly occurs in regard 
to the writings of numerous thinkers ; but it is 
especially great in regard to those of Marx. And 
the interpreter must proceed with caution : he 
must do his work bit by bit, book by book, state- 
ment by statement, connecting indeed these various 
indications one with another, but taking account 
of differences of time, of actual circumstances, of 
fleeting impressions, of mental and literary habits ; 
and he must submit to acknowledge ambiguities 
and incompleteness where either exists, resisting 
the temptation to confirm and complete by his 
own judgment. It may be allowed for instance, as 
it appears to me for various reasons, that the way 
in which historical materialism is stated above is 
the same as that in which Marx and Engels under- 
stood it in their inmost thoughts ; or at least that 
which they would have agreed to as correct if they 
had had more time available for such labours of 
scientific elaboration, and if criticism had reached 
them less tardily. And all this is of importance 
up to a certain point, for the interpreter and his- 
torian of ideas ; since for the history of science, 
Marx and Engels are neither more nor less than 
they appear in their books and works ; real, and 
not hypothetical or possible persons. 1 

1 Gentile, Una critica del materialismo storlco in the Studi 
storici of Crivellucci, vol. vi, 1897, pp. 379-423, throws 
doubt on the interpretation offered by me of the opinions of 
Marx and Engels, and on the method of interpretation itself. 
I gladly acknowledge that in my two earlier essays I do not 
clearly point out where precisely the textual interpretation ends 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 81 

But even for science itself, apart from the 

history of it, the hypothetical or possible Marx 

and Engels have their value. What concerns us 

theoretically is to understand the various possible 

ways of interpreting the problems proposed and the 

solutions thought out by Marx and Engels, and to 

select from the latter by criticism those which 

appear theoretically true and welcome. What was 

Marx's intellectual standpoint with reference to 

the Hegelian philosophy of history ? In what 

consisted the criticism which he gave of it ? Is the 

purport of this criticism always the same for 

instance in the article published in the Deutsch- 

franzdsische Jahrbucher, for 1844, in the Heilige 

and the really theoretical part begins ; which theoretical ex- 
position, only by conjecture and in the manner described above, 
can be said to agree with the inmost thoughts of Marx and 
Engels. In his recent book, Lafilosqfia di Marx, Pisa, Spoerri, 
1899 n wmc h the essay referred to is reprinted), Gentile 
remarks (p. 104), that, although it is a very convenient practice, 
and in some cases legitimate and necessary ' to interpret 
doctrines, by calling a part of their statement worthless or 
accidental in form and external and weak, and a part the real 
substance and essential and vital, it is yet necessary to justify it 
in some way.' He means certainly, ' justify it as historical in- 
terpretation/ since its justification as correction of theory 
cannot be doubtful. It seems to me that even historically the 
interpretation can be justified without difficulty when it is re- 
membered that Marx did not insist, (as Gentile himself says) on 
his metaphysical notions ; and did certainly insist on his historical 
opinions and on the political policy which he defended. 
Marx's personality as a sociological observer and the teacher of 
a social movement, certainly outweighs Marx as a metaphysician 
which he was almost solely as a young man. That it is worth 
the trouble to study Marx from all sides is not denied, and 
Gentile has now admirably expounded and criticised his youth- 
ful metaphysical ideas. 



82 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

Familie of 1845, m tne Misire de la philosophie of 
1847, in the appendix to Das K^omnunistische 
Manifest of 1848, in the preface to the Zur Kjitik 
of 1859, and in the preface to the 2nd edition of 
Das Capital of 1873 ? Is it so again in Engeis' 
works in the Antiduhring^ in the article on Feuerbach, 
etc. ? Did Marx ever really think of substituting, 
as some have believed, Matter or material fact for 
the Hegelian Idea ? And what connection was 
there in his mind between the concepts material and 
economic ? Again, can the explanation given by him, 
of his position with regard to Hegel : c the ideas 
determined by facts and not the facts by the ideas,* 
be called an inversion of Hegel's view, or is it not 
rather the inversion of that of the ideologists and 
doctrinaires ? l These are some of the questions 

1 I confess that I have never been able to understand — however 
much I have considered the matter — the meaning of this 
passage (which ought however to be very evident, since it is 
quoted so often without any comment), in the preface to the 
second edition of Das Kapital : \ Meine dialektische Methode 
ist der Grundlage nach von der Hegel'schen nicht nur 
verschieden, sondern ihr direktes Gegentheil. Fur Hegel is der 
Denkprocess, den er sogar unter dem Namen Idee in ein 
selbstandiger subjeckt verwandelt, der Demjurg des Wirklichen, 
das nur seine aiissere Erscheinung bildet. Bei mir ist umgekehrt 
dasldeelle nichts Andres als das im Menschenkopf umgesetzte und 
ubersetzte Materielle.' (Das Kapital I, p. xvii.) Now it seems 
to me that the Ideelle of the last phrase has no relation to the 
Denkprocess and to the Hegelian Idea of the preceding phrase, 
cf. above pp. 17. Some have thought that by the objections 
there stated, I intended to deny Marx's Hegelian inspiration. It 
is well to repeat that I merely deny the logical relation affirmed 
between the two philosophical theories. To deny Marx's 
Hegelian inspiration would be to contradict the evidence. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 83 

pertaining to the history of ideas, which will be 
answered some time or other : perhaps at present 
the time has not yet arrived to write the history 
of ideas which are still in the process of de- 
velopment. 1 

But, putting aside this historical curiosity, it 
concerns us now to work at these ideas in order 
to advance in theoretical knowledge. How can 
historical materialism justify itself scientifically ? 
This is the question I have proposed to myself, 
and to which the answer is given by the critical 
researches referred to at the beginning of this 
paragraph. Without returning to them I will give 
other examples, taken from the same source, that 
of the Marxian literature. How ought we to under- 
stand scientifically Marx's neodialectic ? The final 
opinion expressed by Engels on the subject seems 
to be this : the dialect is the rhythm of the 
development of things, i.e. the inner law of things 
in their development. This rhythm is not deter- 
mined a priori, and by metaphysical deduction, 
but is rather observed and gathered a posteriori, 
and only through the repeated observations and 
verifications that are made of it in various fields 
of reality, can it be presupposed that all facts 
develop through negations, and negations of 
negations. 2 Thus the dialect would be the discovery 

1 Answers to several of the questions suggested above are now 
supplied in the book already referred to, by Gentile : La 
Filosofia di Marx. 

2 Antidtthring, pt. I. ch. xlii., especially pp. I 38-145, which 
passage is translated into Italian in the appendix to the book by 



84 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

of a great natural law, less empty and formal than 
the so-called law of evolution and it would have 
nothing in common with the old Hegelian dialect 
except the name, which would preserve for us an 
historical record of the way in which Marx arrived 
at it. But does this natural rhythm of develop- 
ment exist ? This could only be stated from 
observation, to which indeed, Engels appealed in 
order to assert its existence. And what kind of a 
law is one which is revealed to us by observation ? 
Can it ever be a law which governs things ab- 
solutely, or is it not one of those which are now 
called tendencies, or rather is it not merely a simple 
and limited generalisation ? And this recognition of 
rhythm through negations of negations, it is not 
some rag of the old metaphysics, from which it 
may be well to free ourselves. 1 This is the in- 
vestigation needed for the progress of science. In 
like manner should other statements of Marx and 
Engels be criticised. What for example shall we 
think of Engels* controversy with Dtthring con- 
cerning the basis of history : whether this is 

Labriola referred to above: Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, 
cf. Das Capital, I. p. xvii, ' Gelingt dies und spiegelt sich nun 
das Leben des stoffs ideell wieder, so mag es aussehen, als habe 
man es mit einer Konstruction a priori zu thun.' 

1 Lange, indeed, in reference to Marx's Das Kapital, remarked 
that the Hegelian dialectic, ' the development by antithesis and 
synthesis, might almost be called an anthropological discovery. 
Only in history, as in the life of the individual, development 
by antithesis certainly does not accomplish itself so easily and radically, 
nor with so much precision and symmetry as in speculative thought.'' 
(T)ie Arbeiterfrage, pp. 248-9.) 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 85 

political force or economic fact ? Will it rc©t seem to 
us that this controversy can perhaps/ 1 . retain any 
value in face of Duhring's assertion that political 
fact is that which is essential historically, but in 
itself has not that general importance which it is 
proposed to ascribe to it ? We may reflect for a 
moment that Engels' thesis : c force protects 
(schulzt) but does not cause (verursacht) usurpation,' 
might be directly inverted into another that : c force 
causes usurpation, but economic interest protects it,' 
and this by the well known principle of the inter- 
dependence and competition of the social factors. 
And the class war ? In what sense is the 
general statement true that history is a class war ? 
I should be inclined to say that history is 
a class war (1) when there are classes, (2) when 
they have antagonistic interests, (3) when they are 
aware of this antagonism, which would give us, 
in the main, the humourous equivalence that 
history is a class war only when it is a class 
war. In fact sometimes classes have not had 
antagonistic interests, and very often they are not 
conscious of them ; of which the socialists are well 
aware when they endeavour, by efforts not always 
crowned with success (with the peasantry, for 
example, they have not yet succeeded), to arouse 
this consciousness in the modern proletariat. As to 
the possibility of the non-existence of classes, the 
socialists who prophesy this non-existence for the 
society of the future, must at least admit that it 
is not a matter intrinsically necessary to historical 



86 (INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

development, since in the future, and without 
classes, history, it may well be hoped will continue. 
In short even the particular statement that c history 
is a class war/ has that limited value of a canon 
and of a point of view, which we have allowed 
in general to the materialist conception. 1 

The second of the two questions proposed at the 
beginning is : How do the Marxians understand 
historical materialism ? To me it seems undeniable 
that in the Marxian literature, i.e. the writings of 
the followers and interpreters of Marx, there exists 
in truth a metaphysical danger of 'which it is necessary 
to beware. Even in the writings of Professor Labriola 
some statements are met with which have recently 
led a careful and accurate critic to conclude that 
Labriola understands historical materialism in the 
genuine and original sense of a metaphysic, and 
that of the worst kind, a metaphysic of the con- 
tigent. 2 But although I have myself, on another 
occasion, pointed out those statements and formulae 
which seem to me doubtful in Labriola's writings, 
I still think, as I thought then, that they are 
superficial outgrowths on a system of thought 
essentially sound ; or to speak in a manner agree- 
ing with the considerations developed above, that 
Labriola, having educated himself in Marxism, may 
have borrowed from it also some of its over-absolute 

1 With regard to the abstract classes of Marxian economics 
and the real or historical classes, see some remarks by Sorel in 
the article referred to in the Journal des Economises, p. 229. 

2 G. Gentile, ox. in Studi storici, p. 421. cf. 400-401. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 87 

style, and at times a certain carelessness about 
the working out of concepts, which are somewhat 
surprising in an old Herbartian like himself, 1 but 
which he then corrects by observations and limita- 
tions always useful, even if slightly contradictory, 
because they bring us back to the ground of 
reality. 

Labriola, moreover, has a special merit, which 
marks him off from the ordinary exponents and 
adapters of historical materialism. Although his 
theoretical formulae may here and there expose him 
to criticism, when he turns to history, i.e. to con- 
crete facts, he changes his attitude, throws off as it 
were, the burden of theory and becomes cautious 
and circumspect : he possesses, in a high degree, respect 
for history. He shows unceasingly his dislike for 
formulae of every kind, when concerned to establish 
and scrutinise definite processes, nor does he forget 
to give the warning that there exists c no theory, 
however good and excellent in itself, which will 
help us to a summary knowledge of every historical 
detail.' 2 

In his last book we may note especially a full 
inquiry into what could possibly be the nature of 

1 Labriola has indeed an exaggerated dislike for what he 
calls the scholastic : but even this exaggeration will not appear 
wholly unsuitable as a reaction against the method of study 
which usually prevails among the mere men of letters, the 
niggardly scholars, the empty talkers and jugglers with abstract 
thought, and all those who lose their sense of close connection 
between science and life. 

2 Discorrendo di socialismo e dl filosophia, 1. ix. 



88 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

a history of Christianity . Labriola criticises those who 
set up as an historical subject the essence of Christi- 
anity, of which it is unknown where or when it 
has existed ; since the history of the last centuries 
of the Roman Empire shows us merely the origin 
and growth of what constituted the Christian 
society, or the church, a varying group of facts 
amidst varied historical conditions. This critical 
opinion held by Labriola seems to me perfectly 
correct ; since it is not meant to deny, (what I 
myself, do not deny) the justification of that method 
of historical exposition, which for lack of another 
phrase, I once called histories by concepts* thus distin- 
guishing it from the historical exposition of the life 
of a given social group in a given place and during 
a given period of time. He who writes the history 
of Christianity^ claims in truth, to accomplish a task 
somewhat similar to the tasks of the historians of 
literature^ of philosophy^ of art : i.e. to isolate a body 
of facts which enter into a fixed concept, and to 
arrange them in a chronological series, without 
however denying or ignoring the source which 
these facts have in the other facts of life, but 
keeping them apart for the convenience of more de- 
tailed consideration. The worst of it is that whereas 
literature, philosophy, art and so on are determined 
or determinable concepts, Christianity is almost 
solely a bond, which unites beliefs often intrinsi- 
cally very diverse ; and, in writing the history of 

1 In tor no alia storia delta cultura (Kulturgeschichtein Atti&&\ 
Accad. Pont. ; vol. xxv. 1895, p. 8.) 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 89 

Christianity, there is often a danger of writing 
in reality the history of a name y void without sub- 
stance. x 

But what would Labriola say if his cautious 
criticism were turned against that history of the origin 
of the family^ of private property and of class distinc- 
tions^ which is one of the most extensive historical 
applications made by the followers of Marx : de- 
sired by Marx, sketched out by Engels on the 
lines of Morgan's investigations, carried on by 
others. Alas, in this matter, the aim was not merely 
to write, as could, perhaps, have been done, a use- 
ful manual of the historical facts which enter into 
• these three concepts, but actually an additional 
history was produced: A history, to use Labriola's 
own phrase, of the essence family, of the essence 
class and of the essence private property, with a 
predetermined cadence. A c history of the family,' 
to confine ourselves to one of the three groups of 
facts, — can only be an enumeration and description 
of the particular forms taken by the family amongst 
different races and in the course of time : a series 
of particular histories, which unite themselves into 
a general concept. It is this which is offered by 
Morgan's theories, expounded by Engels, which 



1 * If by Christianity is meant merely the sum of the beliefs 
and expectations concerning human destiny, these beliefs' — 
writes Labriola — 'vary as much, in truth, as in the difference, 
to mention only one instance, between the free will of the 
Catholics after the Council of Trent, and the absolute 
determination of Calvin ! ' (L.c. ix.) 



9 o INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

theories modern criticism have cut away on all sides. 1 
Have they not allowed themselves to presuppose, 
as an historical stage, through which all races are 
fated to pass, that chimerical matriarchate, in which 
the mere reckoning of descent through the mother 
is confused with the predominance of woman in 
the family and that of woman in society ? Have 
we not seen the reproofs and even the jeers directed 
by some Marxians against those cautious historians 
who deny that it is possible to assert, in the pre- 
sent condition of the criticism of sources, the exist- 
ence of a primitive communism, or a matriarchate, 
amongst the Hellenic races ? Indeed, I do not 
think that throughout this investigation proof has 
been given of much critical foresight. 

I should also like to call Labriola's attention to 
another confusion, very common in Marxian writ- 
ings, between economic forms of organisation and 
economic epochs. Under the influence of evolutionist 
positivism, those divisions which Marx expressed 
in general : the Asiatic, the antique, the feudal and 
the bourgeois economic organisation, have become 
four historical epochs : communism, slave organisation, 
seyf organisation, and wage-earning organisation. But 
the modern historian, who is indeed not such a 
superficial person as the ordinary Marxians are 
accustomed to say, thus sparing themselves the 

1 Without referring to the somewhat unmethodical work of 
Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, see especially Ernst 
Grosse's book, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen des IVirth- 
schaft, Freiburg in B., 1896. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 91 

trouble of taking a share in his laborious procedure, 
is well aware that there are four forms of economic 
organisation, which succeed and intersect one an- 
other in actual history, often forming the oddest 
mixtures and sequences. He recognises an Egyptian 
medievalism or feudalism, as he recognises an 
Hellenic medievalism or feudalism ; he knows 
too of a German neo-medi<evalism which followed 
the flourishing bourgeois organisation of the Ger- 
man cities before the Reformation and the dis- 
covery of the New World ; and he willingly com- 
pares the general economic conditions of the Greco- 
Roman world at its zenith with those of Europe 
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Connected with this arbitrary conception of his- 
torical epochs, is the other of the inquiry into the 
cause (note carefully ; into the cause) of the tran- 
sition from one form to another. Inquiry is made, 
for instance, into the cause of the abolition of slav- 
ery, which must be the same, whether we are con- 
sidering the decline of the Greco-Roman world or 
modern America ; and so for serfdom, and for 
primitive communism and the capitalist system : 
amongst ourselves the famous Loria has occupied 
himself with these absurd investigations, the per- 
petual revelation of a single cause, of which he 
himself does not know exactly whether it be the 
earth, or population or something else — yet it 
should not take much to convince us, (it would 
suffice for the purpose to read, with a little care, 
some books of narrative history), that the transition 



92 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

from one form of economic, or more generally, 
social, organisation, to another, is not the result 
of a single cause, nor even of a group of causes which 
are always the same ; but is due to causes and cir- 
cumstances which need examination for each case 
since they usually vary for each case. Death is 
death ; but people die of many diseases. 

But enough of this ; and I may be allowed to 
conclude this paragraph by reference to a question 
which Labriola also brings forward in his recent 
work, and which he connects with the criticism of 
historical materialism. 

Labriola distinguishes between historical ma- 
terialism as an interpretation of history, and as a 
general conception of life and of the universe 
(Lebens-und-tVeltanschauung), and he inquires what 
is the nature of the philosophy immanent in historical 
materialism ; and after some remarks, he concludes 
that this philosophy is the tendency to monism, and 
is a formal tendency. 

Here I take leave to point out that if into the 
term historical materialism two different things are in- 
truded, i.e. : (i) a method of interpretation ; (2) 
a definite conception of life and of the universe ; 
it is natural to find a philosophy in it, and more- 
over with a tendency to monism, because it was 
included therein at the outset. What close connec- 
tion is there between these two orders of thought ? 
Perhaps a logical connection of mental coherence ? 
For my part, I confess that I am unable to see it. 
I believe, on the contrary, that Labriola, this time, 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 93 

is simply stating a propos of historical materialism 
what he thinks to be the necessary attitude of 
modern thought with regard to the problems of 
ontology ; or what, according to him, should be 
the standpoint of the socialist opinion in regard 
to the conceptions of optimism and pessimism; 
and so on. 1 believe, in short, that he is not making 
an investigation which will reveal the philosophical 
conceptions underlying historical materialism ; but 
merely a digression, even if a digression of interest 
and importance. And how many other most note- 
worthy opinions and impressions and sentiments 
are welcomed by socialist opinion ! But why 
christen this assemblage of new facts by the 
name of historical materialism, which has hitherto 
expressed the well-defined meaning of a way of 
interpreting history ? Is it not the task of the 
scientist to distinguish and analyse what in empiri- 
cal reality and to ordinary knowledge appears 
mingled into one ? 

IV 

OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN FACE OF 
SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

Socialism and free trade not scientific deductions :' Obsolete 
metaphysics of old theory of free trade ; Basis of modern 
free trade theories not strictly scientific though only pos- 
sible one : The desirable is not science nor the practicable : 
Scientific law only applicable under certain conditions ; 
Element of daring in all action. 

It has become a commonplace that, owing to 
Marx's work, socialism has passed from Utopia to 



94 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

science, as the title of a popular booklet by 
Engels expresses it ; and scientific socialism is a 
current term. Professor Labriola does not con- 
ceal his doubts of such a term ; and he is 
right. 

On the other hand, we hear the followers of 
other leaders, for instance the extreme free traders 
(to whom I refer by preference honoris causa, be- 
cause they, too, are amongst the idealists of our 
times), in the name of science itself, condemn so- 
cialism as anti-scientific and declare that free trade 
is the only scientific opinion. 

Would it not be convenient if both sides retraced 
their steps and mortified their pride a little, and 
acknowledged that socialism and free trade may cer- 
tainly be called scientific in metaphor or hyperbole ; 
but that neither of them are, or ever can be, scientific 
deductions ? And that thus the problem of social- 
ism, of free trade and of any other practical social 
programme, may be transferred to another 
region ; which is not that of pure science, but 
which nevertheless is the only one suited to 
them ? 

Let us pause for an instant at free trade. It pre- 
sents itself to us from two points of view, i.e. with 
a two-fold justification. In the older aspect it un- 
deniably has a metaphysical basis, consisting in 
that conviction of the goodness of natural laws and 
that concept of nature (natural law, state of nature, 
etc.) which, proceeding from the philosophy of the 
17th century, was predominant in the 1 8 th cen- 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 95 

tury. 1 c Do not hinder Nature in her work and 
all will be for the best.' A similar note is struck, 
only indirectly, by a criticism like that of Marx; 
who, when analysing the concept of nature, showed 
that it was the idealogical complement of the 
historical development of the middle class, a power- 
ful weapon of which this class availed itself against 
the privileges and oppressions which it intended 
to overthrow. 2 Now this concept may indeed have 
originated as a weapon made occasional use of 
historically, and nevertheless be intrinsically true. 
Na>u?al law in this case, is equivalent to rational 
law ; it is necessary to deny both the rationality 
and the excellence of this law. Now, just because 
of its metaphysical origin, this concept can be re- 
jected altogether, but cannot be refuted in detail — 
it disappears with the metaphysic of which it was 
a part, and it seems at length to have really disap- 
peared. Peace to the sublime goodness of natural 
laws. 

But free trade presents itself to us, among its 
more recent supporters, in a very different aspect 
— the free traders, abandoning metaphysical postu- 
lates, assert two theses of practical importance : {a) 
that of an economic hedonistic maximum, which they 
suppose identical with the maximum of social de- 

1 This connection is shortly but carefully dealt with by In- 
gram, History of Political Economy, Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 
1888, p. 62. 

2 See, amongst many passages, Marx, Misfre de la philosophic, 
p. 167, et seq. Engels, Antidiihring, p. i, et seq. 



96 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

sirability ; r and (b) the other, that this hedonistic 
maximum can only be completely secured by means 
of the fullest economic liberty. The^ two theses 
certainly take us outside metaphysics and into the 
region of reality ; but not actually into the region 
of science. Indeed the first of them contains a state- 
ment of the ends of social life, which may perhaps 
be welcome, but is not a deduction from any scientific 
proposition. The second thesis cannot be proved 
except by reference to experience, i.e. to what we 
know of human psychology, and to what, by 
approximate calculation, we may suppose that psych- 
ology will still probably be in the future. A calcula- 
tion which can be made, and has been made with 
great acumen, with great erudition and with great 
caution and which hence may even be called scientific, 
but only in a metaphorical and hyperbolical sense, 
as we have already remarked : hence the knowledge 
which it affords, us, can never have the value of 
strictly scientific knowledge. 2 Pareto, who is both 
one of the most intelligent and also one of the most 
trustworthy and sincere, of the recent exponents 
and supporters of free trade, 3 does not deny the 
limited and approximate nature of its conclusions ; 
which appears to him so much the more clearly 

1 On the hedonistic maxima, cf. Bertolini-Pantaleoni, Cenni sul 
concetto di massimi edonistici individuali e collectivi {in Giorn, degli 
Econ.y s II vol. iv.) and Coletti, in the same Giornale, vol. v. 

2 In regard to this metaphysical use of the word science ; 
there even exists in Italy a Rivista di polizta scientifica! And the 
metaphor may pass here also. 

3 Cours d' econcmie politique, Lausanne, 1896-7. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 97 

in that he uses mathematical formulae, which show 
at once the degree of certainty to which statements 
of this kind may lay claim. 

And, in effect, communism (which has also had 
its metaphysical period, and earlier still a theo- 
logical period) may, with entire justice, set against 
the two theses of free trade, two others of its own 
which consist : (a) in a different and not purely 
economic estimate of the maximum of social desira- 
bility ; (b) in the assertion that this maximum can be 
attained, not through extreme free trade, but rather 
through the organisation of economic forces ; which 
is the meaning of the famous saying concerning 
the leap from the reign of necessity (=free competi- 
tion or anarchy) into that of liberty (=the command 
of man over the forces of nature even in the sphere 
of the social natural life). But neither can these two 
theses be proved ; and for the same reasons. Ideals 
cannot be proved ; and empirical calculations and 
practical convictions are not science. Pareto clearly 
recognises this quality in modern socialism ; and 
agrees that the communistic system, as a system, is 
perfectly conceivable, i.e. theoretically it offers no 
internal contradictions (§ 446). According to him 
it clashes, not with scientific laws, but with immense 
practical difficulties {I.e.) such as the difficulty of 
adopting technical improvements without the trial 
and selection secured by free competition ; the lack 
of stimuli to work ; the choice of officials, which in 
a communistic society would be guided, still accord- 
ing to him, not by wholly technical reasons, as in 



98 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

modern industry, but on political and social grounds 
(837). He admits the socialist criticism of the waste 
due to free competition ; but thinks this inevitable 
as a practical way of securing equilibrium of pro- 
duction. The real problem — he says— is : whether 
without the experiments of free competition it is 
possible to arrive at a knowledge ot the line (the 
line which he calls mn) of the complete adaptation 
of production to demand, and whether the expense 
of making a unified (communistic) organisation of 
work, would not be greater than that needed to 
solve the equations of production by experiments 
(718, 867). He also acknowledged that there is 
something parasitical in the capitalist (Marx's sad- 
faced knight) ; but, at the same time, he maintains 
that the capitalist renders social services, for which 
we do not know how otherwise to provide. 1 If it 
be desired to state briefly the contrasts in the two 
different points of view, it may be said that human 
psychology is regarded by the free traders as for 
the most part, determined, and by the socialists, 
as for the most part changeable and adaptable. 
Now it is certain that human psychology does 
change and adapt itself; but the extent and rapidity 
of these changes are incapable of exact determina- 
tion and are left to conjecture and opinion. Can 
they ever become the subject of exact calculation ? 

If now we pass to considerations of another kind, 
not of what isdesirable, that is of the ends and means 
admired and thought good by us ; but of what 

1 Cf. also his criticism of Marx already referred to ; p. xviii. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 99 

under present circumstances, history promises us ; 
i.e. of the objective tendencies of modern society, 
I really do not know with what meaning many free 
traders cast on socialism the reproach of being 
Utopian. For quite another reason socialists might 
cast back the same reproach upon free trade, if it 
were considered as it is at present, and not as it was 
fifty years ago when Marx composed his criticism 
upon it. Free Trade and its recommendations turn 
upon an entity which now at /east, does not exist : 
i.e. the national or general interest of society ; since 
existing society is divided into antagonistic groups 
and recognises the interest of each of these groups, 
but not, or only very feebly, a general interest. 
Upon which does free trade reckon ? On the landed 
proprietors or on the industrial classes, on the 
workmen or on the holders of public dignities ? 
Socialism, on the contrary, from Marx onwards, 
has placed little reliance on the good sense and 
good intentions of men, and has declared that the 
social revolution must be accomplished chiefly by 
the effort of a class directly interested, i.e. the pro- 
letariat. And socialism has made such advances that 
history must inquire whether the experience that 
we have of the past justifies the supposition that 
a social movement, so widespread and intense, can 
be reabsorbed or dispersed without fully testing 
itself in the sphere of facts. On this matter too I 
gladly refer to Pareto, who acknowledges that even 
in that country of free traders' dreams, in England, 
the system is supported not owing to people's 



ioo INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

conviction of its intrinsic excellence, but because it 
is in the interests of certain entrepreneurs. 1 And he 
recognises, with political acumen, that since social 
movement takes place in the same manner as all 
other movements, along the line of least resistance, 
it is very likely that it may be necessary to pass 
through a socialistic state, — in order to reach a 
state of free competition (§ 791). 

I have said that the extreme free traders, much 
more than the socialists, are idealists, or if one 
prefers it, ideologists. Hence in Italy we are witnesses 
of this strange phenomenon, a sort of fraternising 
and spiritual sympathy between socialists and 
free traders, in so far as both are bitter and search- 
ing critics of the same thing, which the former 
call the bourgeois tyranny and the latter bourgeois 
socialism. But in the field of practical activity the 
socialists (and here I no longer refer especially to 
Italy) undoubtedly make progress whilst the free 
traders have to limit themselves to the barrenness 
of evil-speaking and of aspirations, forming a little 
group of well-meaning people of select intelligence, 
who make audience for one another. 2 By this 1 
mean no reproach to these sincere and thoroughly 
consistent free-traders : rather I sincerely admire 
them ; their lack of success is not their own fault. 

1 Sauf l'Angleterre, ou regne le libre echange princ'ipalement 
parceqtiil est favourable aux intents de certains entrepeneurs, le reste 
des pays civilises verse de plus en plus dans le protectionnisme 

(§• 964-) 

2 See the Giornale deg/i economist}, excellent in all its critical 
sections ; and especially Pareto's chronicles therein. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 101 

I wish merely to remark that if ideals, as the 
philosopher says, have short legs, those of the free 
traders' ideals are indeed of the shortest. 

I could continue this exemplification, bringing 
forward various other social programmes, such as 
that of state socialism, which consists in accepting 
the socialist ideal, but as an ultimate end perhaps 
never fully attainable, and extending its partial 
attainment over a long course of centuries ; and 
in relying for the effective force, not in a revolu- 
tionary class, nor simply in the views of right 
thinkers, but in the state, conceived as a creative 
power, independent of and superior to individual 
wills. It is certainly undeniable that the function of 
the state, like all social functions, owing to a com- 
plication of circumstances, amongst which are tradi- 
tion, reverence, the consciousness of something 
which surpasses individuals, and other impressions 
and sentiments which are analysed by collective 
psychology, acquires a certain independence and 
develops a certain peculiar force ; but in the estima- 
tion of this force great mistakes are made, as 
socialist criticism has clearly shown : and, in any 
case, whether it be great or small, we are always 
faced by a calculation ; and one moreover, in the 
region of opinion, which region science may, in 
part, yet bring under its power, but which in a 
great degree will always be rebellious to it. 

Oh the misuses which are made of this word 
science ! Once these misuses were the monopoly of 
metaphysics, to whose despotic nature they appeared 



io2 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

suitable. And the strangest instances could be 
quoted, even from great philosophers, from Hegel, 
from Schopenhauer, from Rosmini, which would 
show how the humblest practical conclusions, made 
by the passions and interests of men, have often 
been metaphysically transformed into inferences 
from the Spirit, from the Divine Being, from the 
Nature of things, from the finality of the universe. 
Metaphysics hypostatised what it then triumphantly 
inferred. The youthful Marx wittily discovered in 
the Hegelianism of Bruno Bauer, the pre-established 
harmony of critical analysis (Kritische Kritik) under 
German censorship. Those who most frequently have 
the word in their mouths make a sort of Sibyl or 
Pythia of a limited intellectual function. But the 
desirable is not science, nor is the practicable. 1 

Is scientific knowledge then in fact superfluous 
in practical questions ? Are we to assent to this 
absurdity ? The attentive reader will be well aware 
that we are not here discussing the utility of science, 

1 It may be remarked that in the difficulty of distinguishing 
the purely scientific from the practical lies the chief cause of the 
dangers and poverty of the social and political sciences. And we 
may even smile at those scientists or their ingenious admirers, 
who claim to accomplish the salvation of the social and political 
sciences, by applying to them the methods, as they say, of the 
natural sciences. (An Italian astronomer, ingenuous as clever, 
has suggested the formation of sociological observatories which, 
in a few years would make sociology something like astronomy !) 
Alas ! the matter is not so simple ; all sociologists intend indeed 
to apply exact methods ; but how can this application succeed 
when one advances per ignes or over ground which moves ; a" una 
e cCaltra parte si come Fonda chefugge e s'appressa ? (From both 
sides like the wave which ebbs and flows.) 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 103 

but the possibility of inferring, as some claim to do, 
practical programmes from scientific prepositions ; and it 
is this possibility only which is denied. 

Science, in so far as it consists in knowledge of 
the laws governing actual facts, may be a legitimate 
means of simplifying problems, making it possible 
to distinguish in them what can be scientifically 
ascertained from what can only be partially known. 
A great number of things which are commonly 
disputed, may be cleared up and accurately decided 
by this method. To give an example, when Marx 
in opposition to Proudhon and his English pre- 
decessors (Bray, Gray, etc.) showed the absurdity 
of creating labour bonds, i.e. labour-money ; and 
when Engels directed similar criticisms against 
Duhring, and then again, perhaps with less justifi- 
cation, against Rodbertus 1 or when both established 
the close connection between the method of pro- 
duction and the method of distribution, they were 
working in the field proper to scientific demonstra- 
tion, trying to prove an inconsistency between the 
conclusions and the premisses, i.e. an internal con- 
tradiction in the concepts criticised. The same may 
be said of the proof, carefully worked out by the 
free traders, of the proposition : that protection of 
every kind is equivalent to a destruction of wealth. 
And if it were possible to establish accurately that 
law of the tendency of the rate of profits to decline, 

1 See the preface of the German translation of Misere de 
la philosophic, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892, and now also in French 
in the reprint of the original text of the same work (Paris, Giard 
et Briere, J 896.) 



io 4 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

with which Marx meant to correct and widen the 
Ricardian law deduced from the continuous en- 
croachments of the rent of land, it could be said, 
under certain conditions, that the end of the bourgeois 
capitalist organisation was a scientific certainty, 
though it would remain doubtful what could take 
its place. 

This limitation c undet certain conditions' is the 
point to be noticed. All scientific laws are abstract 
laws ; and there is no bridge over which to pass 
from the concrete to the abstract ; just because the 
abstract is not a reality, but a form of thought, one 
of our, so to speak, abreviated ways of thinking. 
And, although a knowledge of the laws may light 
up our perception of reality, it cannot become this 
perception itself. 

Here we may agree with what Labriola justly 
felt, when, showing his dissatisfaction with the 
term scientific socialism, he suggested, though with- 
out giving any reasons, that that of critical commun- 
ism might be substituted. 1 

If then from abstract laws and concepts we pass 
to observations of historical fact, we find, it is true, 
points of agreement between our ideals and real 
things, but at the same time we enter upon those 
difficult calculations and conjectures, from which 
it is always impossible to eliminate, as was re- 

1 The word communism is also more appropriate, since there 
are so many socialisms (democratic state, catholic, etc.). On the 
relation between the materialistic theory of history and socialism, 
see Gentile, op. cit., passim. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 105 

marked above, the diversity of opinions and pro- 
pensities. 

In face of the future of society, in face of the 
path to be pursued, we have occasion to say with 
Faust — Who can say I believe ? Who can say I 
do not believe ? 

Not indeed that we wish to advocate or in any 
way justify a vulgar scepticism. But at the same 
time we need to be sensible of the relativity of our 
beliefs, and to come to a determination in practice 
where indetermination is an error. This is the 
point ; and herein lie all the troubles of men of 
thought ; and hence arises their practical impotence, 
which art has depicted in Hamlet. Neither shall we 
wish, in truth, to imitate that magistrate, famous 
for miles around the district where he officiated for 
the justice of his decisions, of whom Rabelais tells 
us, that he used the very simple method, when 
about to make up his mind, of offering a prayer 
to God and settling his decision by a game of odd 
and even. 1 But we must strive to attain personal 
conviction, and then bear always in mind that great 
characters in history have had the courage to dare. 
c Aha j acta est* said Caesar ; c Golt helfe mir, amen ! ' 
said Luther. The brave deeds of history would 
not be brave if they had been accompanied by 
a clear foresight of the consequences, as in 
the case of the prophets and those inspired by 
God. 

Fortunately, logic is not life, and man is not 
1 Pantagruel, III, 39-43. 



106 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

intellect alone. And, whilst those same men whose 
critical faculty is warped, are the men of imagina- 
tion and passion, in the life of society the intellect 
plays a very small part, and with a little exaggera- 
tion it may even be said that things go their way 
independent of our actions. Let us leave them to 
their romances, let them preach, I will not say in 
the market places where they would not be believed, 
but in the university lecture rooms, or the halls 
of congresses and conferences — the doctrine that 
science (i.e. their science) is the ruling queen of 
life. And we will content ourselves by repeating 
with Labriola that c History is the true mistress of 
all us men, and we are as it were vitalised by 
History/ 

V 

OF ETHICAL JUDGMENT IN FACE OF SOCIAL 
PROBLEMS 

Meaning of Marx's phrase the l impotence of morality ' and 
his remark that morality condemns what has been con- 
demned by history : Profundity of Marx's philosophy 
immaterial : Kant's position not surpassed. 

Labriola, with his usual piquancy, lashes those 
who reduce history to a case of conscience or to an 
error in bookkeeping. 

With this he recalls us to the two-fold consider- 
ation (i) that for Marx the social question was not 
a moral question, and (2) that the analysis made by 
Marx of capitalism amounts to a proof of the laws 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 107 

which govern a given society, and not indeed to a 
proof of thefts as some have understood it, 
as though it would suffice to restore to the work- 
man the amount of his wrongfully exacted surplus 
labour, so that the accounts may turn out in order, 
and the social question be satisfactorily solved. 1 

Leaving the second consideration, which yet 
gives us an instance of the ludicrous travesties which 
may be made of a scientific theory, let us pause 
for a moment over the first formula, which usually 
gives the greatest offence to non-socialists ; so 
much so that many of them wish to put a little 
salt in the broth and complete socialism by morality. 

In actual fact, offence and moral indignation 
have never been caused less appropriately. 

Those remarks in Marx's writings which savour 
of moral indifference, bear a very limited and 
trivial meaning. Consider a moment, as indeed 
has been considered many times, that no social 
order of any kind can exist without a basis of 
slavery, or serfdom, or hired service ; that is to 
say that slavery, or serfdom, or hired service are 
natural conditions of social order, and that without 
them a thing cannot exist, which is so necessary to 

1 The absurdity of this interpretation will come out clearly 
if it is merely remembered that there are many cases in which 
the capitalist manufacturer pays for the labour of his workman, 
a price higher than zvhat he then realises on the market : cases, it is 
true, where the capitalist is proceeding towards ruin and bank- 
ruptcy ; but which he cannot, on this account, always avoid. 
* Marx part des recherches faites par cette ecole Anglaise, dont 
il avait fait une etude approfondie ; et il veut expliquer le profit 
sans admettre aucun brigandage? (Sorel, art. cit., p. 227.) 



108 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

man that, at least since he was man, he has never 
done without it, viz., society. Faced by such a fact, 
what meaning would our moral judgment have, 
directed against these governing human beings 
who call themselves slave owners, feudal lords 
and bourgeois capitalists, and in favour of these 
governed human beings who call themselves slaves, 
serfs, free labourers ; neither of whom could be 
different from what they are, nor could otherwise 
fulfil the function assigned to them by the very 
nature of things. 1 Our condemnation would be a 
condemnation of the inevitable ; a Leopardian curse 
directed against the brutal power which rules in secret 
to the general harm. But moral praise or blame has 
reference always to an act of will, good or bad ; 
and such judgments would on the contrary be 
directed against a fact, which has not been willed 
by anyone, but is endured by every one because 
it cannot be different. You, indeed, may lament 
it ; but by lamenting it, you not only do not de- 
stroy it, you do not even touch it, i.e., you waste 
your time. 

This is what Marx calls the impotence of moral- 
ity, which is as much as to say that it is useless to 
propound questions which no effort can answer and 
which are therefore absurd. 

But when, on the other hand, these conditions 
of subjection are not conceived as necessary for the 
social order in general, but only as necessary for a 

1 See in Antidilhrhg, p. 303, the historical justification of 
class divisions. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 109 

stage in its history ; and when new conditions make 
their appearance which render it possible to destroy 
them (as was the case in the industrial advance to- 
ward serfdom, and as the socialists reckon will 
happen in the final phase of modern civilisation in 
regard to wage earners and capitalism) ; then moral 
condemnation is justified, and, up to a certain 
point, is also effective in quickening the process of 
destruction and in sweeping away the last remnants 
of the past. 

This is the meaning of Marx's other saying : 1 
that morality condemns what has already been con- J 
demned by history. 1 

I cannot manage to see any difficulty in agreeing 
to remarks of this kind, even from the standpoint 
of the strictest ethical theories. There is here no 
question of misunderstanding the nature of moral- 
ity, and of wishing to make it into something for- 
tuitous or relative ; but simply of determining the 
conditions of human progress, turning the attention 
from the inevitable effects to the fundamental 
causes, and seeking remedies in the nature of things 
and not in our caprices and pious wishes. It must 
needs be thought that the opposition proceeds, not 
from intellectual error, but rather from human 
pride, or vanity it may be, owing to which many 
desire to retain for their wretched words a little of 

1 From among the many passages which support this inter- 
pretation, cf. Antidilhring, pp. 152-3, 206 and especially pp. 61- 
2, and the preface to the German translation of Misere de la 
Philosophic, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892 pp. ix-x, cf. also Labriola, 
o.c. Lett. VIII. 



no INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

the virtue of the divine word, which created light 
by its decree. 1 

1 See Labriola, o.c. I. cit., the remarks on the difficulty with 
which the theory of historical materialism meets owing to 
mental dispositions, and amongst those who wish to moralise 
socialism. 

One instance, in some respects analogous to this which arises 
from the discussions on Marx's ethics, is the traditional criticism 
of Machiavelli's ethics : which was refuted by De Sanctis (in the 
remarkable chapter devoted to Machiavelli, in his Storia della 
letteraturd), but which continually recurs and is inserted even in 
Professor Villari's book, who finds this defect in Machiavelli : 
that he did not consider the moral question. 

I have always asked myself for what reason, by what obliga- 
tion, by what agreement, Machiavelli was bound to discuss all 
kinds of questions, even those for which he had neither prepara- 
tion nor sympathy. Can it be said, by way of example, to some 
one who is researching in chemistry : — Your weak and errone- 
ous spot is that you have not gone back from your detailed 
investigations to the general metaphysical enquiries into the 
principles of reality ? — Machiavelli starts from the establishment 
of a fact : the condition of war in which society found itself ; 
and gives rules suited to this state of affairs. Why should he, 
who was not cut out for a moral philosopher, discuss the ethics 
of war ? He goes straight to practical conclusions. Men are 
wicked — he says — and to the wicked it is needful to behave 
wickedly. You will deceive him who would certainly deceive 
you. You will do violence to him who would do violence to 
you. These maxims are neither moral nor immoral, neither 
beneficial nor harmful ; they become one of the two according 
to the subjective aims and the objective effects of the action, i.e. 
according to the intentions and the results. What is evident is that 
a morality which desired to introduce into war the maxims of 
peace would be a morality for lambs fit for the slaughter, not for 
men who wish to repel injustice and to maintain their rights. 
' And if men were all good, this precept would not be good, etc., 
etc' says Machiavelli himself. (Principe, ch. xvm). Villari is also 
troubled by the old formula concerning the * end which justifies 
the means ' and the ' moral end ' and the ' immoral means '. It is 
however sufficient to consider that the means, just because they 
are means, cannot be divided into moral and immoral, but merely 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 1 1 1 

The same feeling must perhaps be present as the 
basis of the horror which usually greets the other 
practical maxim of the socialists ; that the workman 
educates himself by the political struggle. But 
Labriola is fully justified in admiring in the advance 
of German socialism c the truly new and imposing 
instance of social pedagogy; viz. that, amongst such 
an enormous number of men, particularly of work- 
men of the lower middle class, a new consciousness 
is developing, within which compete in equal 
degree, a direct sense of the economic situation, 
which incites to the struggle, and the socialist pro- 
paganda understood as the goal or point of arrival.' 
What means have the preachers of moral maxims 
at their disposal, to secure a result equal to this ? 
Who are these workmen who combine in associa- 
tions, who read their newspapers, discuss the acts 
of their delegates and accept the decisions of their 
congresses, if not men who are educating themselves 
morally ? 

But there is not only a question of vanity and 

pride in that feeling of aversion, which animates 

many with regard to the practical maxims of the 

into suitable and unsuitable. Immoral means, unless as an expression 
in current speech, is a contradiction in terms. The qualification 
moral or immoral can only belong to the end. And, in the ex- 
amples usually given, an analysis made with a little accuracy 
shows at once, that it is never a question of immoral means but 
of immoral ends. The height of the confusion is reached by 
those who introduce into the question the absurd distinction of 
private and public morality. 

I may be pardoned the digression ; but, as I said, questions 
which are really analogous re-appear now in connection with 
the ethical maxims of Marxism. 



ii2 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

socialists, and in the desire, which people also show, 
of undertaking in the name of morality or religion, 
the spiritual direction of the education of the work- 
ing man ; nor shall we wish to be so ingenuous 
and complacent as to confine ourselves to such a 
partial explanation. There is more, there is, I might 
almost say, an apprehension and a fear. An appre- 
hension, little justified, lest the political organisa- 
tion of the proletariat may lead to a brutal and un- 
restrained outbreak of the masses and to I know 
not what kind of social ruin ; as if such outbreaks 
were not recorded by history in precisely those 
periods in which it is usual to suppose that the 
dominion of religion over conscience was greatest, 
— as in the jacqueries of the fourteenth century in 
France,and again in thepeasants* wars in Germany, — 
and in which there was no organisation and politi- 
cal culture amongst the common people. 1 A fear, 
which is on the contrary thoroughly justified and 
arises from the knowledge that instinctive and blind 
proletariat movements are conquered by force ; 
whereas organisation combined with an enlightened 
consciousness, is not conquered or only suffers tem- 
porary reverses. Does not Mcmmsen remark, in 
reference to the slave revolts in ancient Rome ; 
that states would be very fortunate if they were in 
no other dangers besides those which might come 

1 And it would be to the point to draw a comparison be- 
tween the peasants' rebellions, with which modern Italy has 
supplied us with another example in recent years, and the poli- 
tical struggles of the German workmen, or the economic 
struggles of the Trade Unions in England. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 113 

to them from the revolts of the proletariat, which 
are no greater than the dangers arising from the claws 
of hungry bears or wolves ? 

These statements concerning ethics and socialist 
pedagogy having been explained, someone might 
yet ask : — But what was the philosophical opinion 
of Marx and Engels in regard to morality ? Were 
they relativists, utilitarians, hedonists, or idealists, 
absolutists, or what else ? 

I may be allowed to point out that this question 
is of no great importance, and is even somewhat 
inopportune, since neither Marx nor Engels were 
philosophers of ethics, nor bestowed much of their 
vigorous ability on such questions. It is indeed of 
consequence to determine that their conclusions in 
regard to the function of morality in social move- 
ments and to the method for the education of the 
proletariat, contain no contradiction of general ethi- 
cal principles, even if here and there they clash 
with the prejudices of current pseudo-morality. 
Their personalopinions upon the principles of ethics 
did not take an elaborate scientific form in their 
books ; and some wit and some sarcasm are not 
adequate grounds upon which to base a discussion 
of the subject. 

And I will say yet more ; in ethical matters, I 
have not yet succeeded in freeing myself from the 
prison of the Kantian Critique, and do not yet see 
the position taken up by Kant surpassed ; on the 
contrary, I see it strengthened by some of the most 
modern tendencies, and to me the way in which 



ii 4 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

Engels attacks Dilhring with regard to the princi- 
ples of morality in his well-known book, does not 
in truth appear very exhaustive. 1 Here again the 
procedure is repeated which we have already criti- 
cised in connection with the discussions upon the 
general concept of value. Where Duhring, owing 
to the exigencies of scientific abstraction, takes for 
consideration the isolated individual and explicitly 
states that he is dealing with an abstract illustration 
{Denkschema\ Engels remarks, wittily but errone- 
ously — that the isolated man is nothing but a new 
edition of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. 
It is true that in that criticism are contained many 
well-directed blows ; and it might even be called 
just, if it refers only to ethical conceptions in the 
sense of assemblages of special rules and moral 
judgments, relative to definite social situations, 
which assemblages and constructions cannot claim 
absolute truth for all times, and all places, precisely 
because they are always made for particular times 
and particular places. But apart from these special 
constructions, analysis offers us the essential and 
ruling principles of morality, which give oppor- 
tunity for questions which may, truly, be differ- 
ently answered, but which most certainly are 
not taken into account by Marx and Engels. 
And, in truth, even if some may be able to 
write on the theory of knowledge according tc 



1 See in particular P. I. ch. ix., Moral und Recht, Ewige 
Wahrheiten. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 115 

MarxJ to write on the principles of ethics accord- 
ing to Marx seems to me a somewhat hopeless 
undertaking. 

VI 

CONCLUSION 

Recapitulation ; I . Justification of Marxian economics as com- 
parative sociological economics : 2. Historical materialism 
simply a canon of historical interpretation : 3. Marxian 
social programme not a pure science : 4. Marxism neither 
intrinsically moral nor antimoral. 

The preceding remarks are partly attempts at 
interpretation, and partly critical emendations of 
some of the concepts and opinions expressed by 
Marx and in the Marxian literature. But how many 
other points deserve to undergo revision ! Begin- 
ning with that concentration of private property in a 
few hands, which threatens to become something 
like the discredited iron law of wages, and ending 
with that strange statement in the history of philo- 
sophy that the labour movement is the heir of German 

1 See, in particular, Marx's ideas : Ueber Feuerbach, in 1845, 
in the appendix to Engels' book, Ludzvig Feuerbach und der 
Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 
1895, pp. 59-62 ; and cf. Andler in Revue de metaphysique, 
1897, Labriola, o.c. passim and Gentile, I.e., p. 319. From 
this point of view (i.e. limiting the statement to the theory of 
knowledge) we might speak like Labriola of historical material- 
ism as a philosophy of practice, i.e. as a particular way of con- 
ceiving and solving, or rather of over-coming, the problem of 
thought and of existence. The philosophy of practice has now 
been designedly studied by Gentile in the volume referred to. 



116 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

classical philosophy. And attention could thus be 
given to another group of questions which we have 
not discussed (e.g. to the conception of future so- 
ciety) in regard to their detailed elucidation and 
their practical and historical applications. 1 If that 
decomposition of Marxism, which some have pre- 
dicted, 2 meant a careful critical revision, it would 
indeed be welcome. 

To sum up, in the meantime, the chief results 
which are suggested in the preceding remarks : 
they maintain. 

i. In regard to economic science, the justification 
of Marxian economics, understood not as general 
economic science, but as comparative sociological 
economics, which is concerned with a problem of 
primary interest for historical and social life. 

2. In regard to the philosophy of history, the 
purification of historical materialism from all traces 
of any a priori standpoint (whether inherited from 

1 Some interpretations would be merely verbal explanations. 
To some it will appear a very hard statement that socialism 
aims at abolishing the State. Yet it suffices to consider that the 
State, among socialists, is synonymous with difference of classes 
and the existence of governing classes, to understand that as in 
such a case we can speak of the origin of fhe State, so we can speak 
of its end ; which does not mean the end of organised society 
(cf. Antidiihring,, p. 302). The conception of the way in which 
capitalist society will come to an end demands no little critical work- 
ing out ; on this point the thought of Marx and Engels is not 
without obscurities and inconsistencies (cf. Jlntiduhring, pp. 
287 et seq. and p. 297). 

2 See Ch. Andler, Les origlnes du socialisme d'etat en Alle- 
magne, Paris, Alcan, 1897. Andler promises a book, and is now 
giving a course of lectures on the decomposition of Marxism. 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 117 

Hegelianism or an infection from ordinary evolu- 
tionism) and the understanding of the theory as a 
simple, albeit a fruitful, canon of historical interpre- 
tation. 

3. In regard to practical matters, the impossibil- 
ity of inferring the Marxian social programme (or, 
indeed, any other social programme) from the pro- 
positions of pure science, since the appraisement of 
social programmes must be a matter of empirical 
observations and practical convictions ; in which 
connection the Marxian programme cannot but 
appear one of the noblest and boldest and also one 
of those which obtain most support from the ob- 
jective conditions of existing society. 

4. In regard to ethics, the abandonment of the 
legend of the intrinsic immorality or of the intrinsic 
anti-ethical character of Marxism. ; 

I will add a remark on the second point. Many 
will think that if historical materialism is reduced 
to the limits within which we have confined it, it 
will not only no longer be a legitimate and real 
scientific theory (which we are indeed prepared to 
grant) but will actually lose all importance what- 
ever, and against this second conclusion we once 
more, as we have done already on another occasion, 
make vigorous protest. Undoubtedly the horror 
expressed by some for pure science and for abstrac- 
tions is inane, since these intellectual methods are 
indispensable for the very knowledge of concrete 
reality ; but no less inane is the complete and ex- 
clusive worship of abstract propositions, of defini- 



n8 INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM 

tions, of theorems, of corollaries : almost as if these 
constituted a sort of aristocracy of human thought. 
Well ! the economic purists (not to draw examples 
from other fields, though numbers could be found 
in pure mathematics) prove to us, in fact, that the 
discovery of scientific theorems, — strictly, unim- 
peachably scientific, — is frequently neither an over- 
important nor over-difficult matter. To be con- 
vinced thereof we need only remark how many 
eponimi of new theorems issue from every corner 
of the German or English schools. And concrete 
reality, i.e. the very world in which we live and 
move, and which it concerns us somewhat to know, 
slips out, unseizable, from the broad-meshed net 
of abstractions and hypotheses. Marx, as a sociolo- 
gist, has in truth not given us carefully worked 
out definitions of social phenomena, such as may be 
found in the books of so many contemporary so- 
ciologists, of the Germans Simmel and Stammler, 
or of the Frenchman Durckheim ; but he teaches 
us, although it is with statements approximate in 
content and paradoxical in form, to penetrate to 
what society is in its actual truth. Nay, from this 
point of view, I am surprised that no one has 
thought of calling him c the most notable successor 
of the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli ' ; a Machiavelli 
of the labour movement. 

And I will also add a remark on the third point 
— if the social programme of Marxism cannot be 
wholly included in Marxian science, or in any other 
science, no more can the daily practice of socialist 



OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM 119 

politics be, in its turn, wholly included m the general 
principles of the programme, which programme, 
if we analyse it, determines (1) an ultimate end^ 
(the technical organisation of society) ; (2) an im- 
pulse^ based on history \ towards this end, found in 
the objective tendencies of modern society (the 
necessity for the abolition of capitalism and for a 
communistic organisation, as the one possible/or^ oj 
progress); (3) a method (to accelerate the final phases 
of the bourgeoisie, and to educate politically the 
class destined to succeed them). Marx, owing to 
his political insight, has for many years in a strik- 
ing manner, joined with, and guided by his advice 
and his work, the international socialist movement; 
but he could not give precepts and dogmas for every 
contingency and complication that history might 
produce. Now the continuation of Marx's political 
work is much more difficult than the continuation of his 
scientific work. And, if, in continuing the latter, the 
so-called Marxians have sometimes fallen into a 
scientific dogmatism little to be admired, some recent 
occurrences remind us of the danger, that the con- 
tinuation of the former may also degenerate into a 
dogmatism with the worst effects, i.e. a political 
dogmatism. This gives food for thought to all the 
more cautious Marxians, amongst whom are Kaut- 
sky and Bernstein in Germany, and Sorel in France; 
Labriola's new book, too, contains serious warn- 
ings on the matter. 

November 1897. 



CHAPTER IF. RECENT INTERPRETATIONS 
OF THE MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 
AND CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING 
THEM 

1 

Labriola* s criticism of method and conclusions of preceeding 
essays answered: His criticism merely destructive ; 
Tendency of other thinkers to arrive at like conclusions. 

I have always discussed frankly the views expressed 
in the writings of my eminent friend Professor 
Antonio Labriola. I am therefore glad that he has 
taken the same liberty with me, and has subjected 
to a vigorous criticism (in the French edition of 
his book on Socialismo e la filosofia)* my interpre- 
tation of the Marxian theory of value. 2 Labriola 
has been impelled to this also from a wish to prevent 
my opinions from appearing, c to the reader's eyes/ 
as a supplement, approved by him, of his own 
personal ones. And though 1 do not think that c to 
the reader's eyes ' (I will however add intelligent 
readers), this would be possible, since, I have 
always carefully indicated the points, and they 
are neither few nor unimportant, where we disagree : 
yet being convinced that clearness is never super- 
fluous, I welcome his intention to make it still 

1 Soeialisme et philosophic by Antonio Labriola. Paris, Giard 
et Briere, 1899, see pp. 207-224. Postscript to the French 
edition. 

2 See chap. 111. 



MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 121 

plainer that I am not he, and that he thinks with 
his mind whilst I think with mine. 

Labriola rejects entirely the method adopted by 
me, which he describes variously as scholastic, meta- 
physical, metaphorical, abstract, formal logic. When I 
take pains to point out the differences between 
homo oeconomicus and man, moral or immoral, 
between personal interest and egoism, 1 he shrugs 
his shoulders, he does not refuse a certain indul- 
gence to this traditional scholasticism, and compares 
me to the man in the street who speaks of the 
rising or setting of the sun, or of shining light and 
warm heat. When I firmly maintain the theoretical 
necessity for a general economics in addition to 
the heterogeneous considerations of sociological 
economics, he taxes me with creating, in addition 
to all the visible and tangible animals, an animal as 
such. And he charges me, moreover, with wishing 
to attack history, comparative philology and 
physiology in order to substitute for all these the 
plain Logic of Port Royal, so that instead of study- 
ing examples of epigenesis which have actually 
occurred, such as the transitions from invertebrates 
to vertebrates,from primitive communism to private 
property in land, from undifferentiated roots to the 
systematic differentiation of nouns and verbs in the 
Ariosemitic group, it might suffice to register these 

1 Like an impenitent sinner I shall come back to this dis- 
tinction, which is essential for the solid foundation of the 
principles of economics, and the evil effects of whose neglect 
are apparent in the discourses of economists. 



122 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

facts in concepts passing from the more general to 
the more particular, in the series A a 1 a 2 a 3 etc. 

But I hardly know how to defend myself seriously 
from such accusations, because it obliges me to 
repeat what is too obvious, i.e., that to make con- 
cepts does not mean to create entities ; that to em- 
ploy metaphors (and language is all metaphor), 
does not mean to believe mythology ; that to con- 
struct experiences in thought, and scientific abstrac- 
tions, does not mean to substitute either one or the 
other for concrete reality ; that to make use, when 
needful, of formal logic, does not mean to ignore 
fact,growth> history. When Marx expounds historical 
facts 1 know no way of approaching him except 
that of historical criticism, and when he defines con- 
cepts and formulates laws, I can only proceed to 
recognise the content of his concepts, and to test 
the correctness of his inferences and deductions. 
Thus I have followed this second method in 
studying his theory of value. If Labriola knows 
another and better one, let him state it. But what 
could this other one possibly be ? Real logic ? In 
that case let us boldly re-establish Hegel, it will 
be the lesser evil, at least we shall understand one 
another. Or a still worse alternative, what monstrous 
empirical-dialetic or evolutionist method may it 
be, which confuses together and abuses two distinct 
procedures, and lends itself so readily to the lovers 
of prophecy ? Or is it merely a question of new 
phraseology by which we shall go on humbly 
working, more or less well, with the old methods, 



INTERPRETATIONS 123 

whilst detesting the old words ? Or again, is this 
dislike for formal logic nothing but a convenient 
pretext for dispensing with any vindication of the 
concepts which are employed ? 

Marx has stated his concept of value ; has ex- 
pounded a process of transformation of value into 
price ; has reconstructed the nature of profit as 
surplus value. For me the whole problem of Marx- 
ian criticism is confined within these limits : — Is 
Marx's conception substantially erroneous (entirely, 
owing to false premisses, and partially, owing to 
false deductions)? or, is Marx's conception sub- 
stantially correct, but has it been subsumed under 
a category to which it does not belong, and has 
search been made in it for what it cannot supply, 
whilst what it actually offers has been ignored ? 
Having come to this second conclusion I have 
asked myself : Under what conditions and assump- 
tions is Marx's theory thinkable ? And this question 
I have tried to answer in my essay. 

What Marx wished to do, or mistakenly thought 
himself to be doing is, I think, of interest to criti- 
cism up to a certain point ; although the history 
of science shows that thinkers have not always had 
the clearest and plainest knowledge of the whole 
of their thought ; and that it is one thing to dis- 
cover a truth, and another to define and classify 
the discovery when made. It may be allowed that 
he who confuses ideological with historical research 
thus best reproduces Marx's spirit ; but in this case 
the work will be an artistic recasting or a psycho- 



1 24 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

logical reproduction, not a criticism ; and will 
gather up with the sound also the unsound portion 
of Marx's thought. 

To go into details. Labriola tries to prove the 
emptiness or vagueness of some of my definitions 
and the falsity of some of my reasoning. 1 having 
asserted that capitalist economics is a special case of 
general economics, Labriola remarks, c en passant] 
that it is nevertheless the only case which has given 
rise to a theory and to divisions of schools ; and I 
acknowledge that I do not understand the point of 
this remark, although it is said to be made c en pass ant.' 
Both Marx and Engels lamented that the ancient 
and medieval economic sy terns had not been studied 
in the same way as the modern. Thus there are con- 
ceivable at least three economic theories, ancient, 
medieval and modern, and is it not lawful to con- 
struct a general economics ; i.e. to study in isola- 
tion that common element which causes these three 
groups of facts to be all three denoted by a common 
name ? Labriola then asks what this general and 
extra-historical economics can consist of, and 
whether it can never be of service to the con- 
jectural psychology of primitive man : he jests after 
the manner of Engels, who in truth has some- 
times joked too much during a discussion on 
serious matters. Is it incredible that I too 
should jest ? But I do not think there is occa- 
sion to do so ! He wonders at my insatiability^ 
because having accepted the hedonistic theories, I 
wish to accept Marx's theories too : as though my 



INTERPRETATIONS 1 2 5 

entire proof was not intended to make it plain that 
the antithesis between these theories exists only in 
imagination ; and that Marx's theory is not an 
economic system entirely opposed to other systems 
i^quelque chose de tout-a-fait oppose'' are Labriola's 
own words), but a special and partial inquiry ; and 
as though by hedonism I meant all the personal 
convictions, philosophical, historical and political, 
of those who follow, or say that they follow, its 
guidance, and not indeed only what follows legiti- 
mately from its axiom. When I call the explanation 
of the nature of profits, offered by the hedonistic 
school, an economic explanation^ he inquires sarcastic- 
ally : c Could it possibly be non-economic ? ' But my 
statement contains no pleonasm : the adjective 
economic is added to mark off the hedonistic ex- 
planation from that of Marx, which, to my think- 
ing, is not purely economic, but historical and 
comparative, or sociological, if it is preferred. He 
wonders that I speak of a working society ', and asks : 
c As opposed to what ? ' c Perhaps to the saints in 
paradise ? ' But I have pointed out the opposition 
between a hypothetical working society^ — i.e. such 
that all its goods are produced by labour, — and a 
society, economic certainly, but not exclusively 
working, because it enjoys goods given by nature, 
as well as the products of labour. The saints in 
paradise form another irrelevant jest. 

I called Marx's concept of surplus-value a concept 
of difference ; and Labriola reproaches me for not 
being able c to say exactly what 1 understand by 



126 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

these words/ And yet I am not in the habit of 
speaking or writing when I do not exactly know 
what I want to say ; and here I believe that I have 
clearly expressed a thought which I had exceedingly 
clearly in my mind. Let us take two types of society : 
type A consisting of ioo persons, who, with capital 
held in common and equal labour, produce goods 
which are divided in equal proportions ; type B 
consisting of ioo persons, 50 of whom own the 
land and the means of production, i.e. are capitalists, 
and 50 are shut out from this ownership, i.e. are 
proletarians and workmen ; in the distribution, the 
former receive, in proportion to the capital which 
they employ, a share in the products of the labour 
of the latter. It is evident that in type A there is 
no place for surplus value. But neither in type B are 
you justified in giving the name surplus-value to 
that portion of the products which is swallowed up 
by the capitalists, except when you are comparing 
type B with type A, and are considering the former 
as a contrast to the latter. If type B is considered by 
itself, which is precisely what the pure economists 
do and ought to do, the product which the 50 
capitalists appropriate, i.e. their profits, is a result 
of mutual agreement, arising out of different com- 
parative degrees of utility. Turn in every direction 
and in pure economics you will find nothing more. 
The expropriatory character of profit can be asserted 
only when to the second society, we apply, almost 
like a chemical reagent, the standard, which, on the 
other hand, is characteristic of a type of society 



INTERPRETATIONS 127 

founded on human equality, a type c which has 
attained the solidity ofa popular conviction '(Marx). 
Profit £ is surplus-labour not paid for •,' says Marx, 
and it may be so ; but not paid for in reference to 
what ? In existing society it is certainly paid for, by 
the price which it actually secures. It is a question 
then, of determining in what society it would have 
that price which in existing society is denied it. 
And then, indeed, it is a question of comparison. 

The following of Labriola's assertions is not 
original, but is nevertheless quite gratuitous : 
6 Pure economics is so little extra-historical, that 
it has borrowed the data from real history, of which 
it makes two absolute postulates : the freedom of 
labour and the freedom of competition, pushed to 
their extreme by hypothesis.' If I open Pantaleoni's 
well-known treatise, I read in the very first para- 
graph of the Teoria delvalore, Ferrara's fundamental 
theory that : c value is above all a phenomenon of 
the economics of the individual or isolated pet son? So 
little do the legal conditions of society enter into 
the necessary postulates of pure economics. 

After which, Labriola ought not to be horrified 
if I have written : c that Marx has taken his cele- 
brated equivalence x " between value and labour from 

1 1 write equivalence because Marx writes thus, and because for 
the present question this other is quite irrelevant : viz. whether 
the relation of value can be expressed in the mathematical form 
of a relation of equivalence. But, for my part, and I follow the 
hedonists in this ; I deny entirely that the relation of value is 
a relation of equivalence. The proof of this has already been 
supplied by others, and there is no occasion to repeat it. 



128 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

outside the field of pure economics.' He will ask 
me : from whence then has he taken it ? And 1 
reply : from a special and definite type of society, in 
which the legal organisation and the pre-supposed 
conditions of fact make value correspond to the 
quantity of labour. 

Labriola does not consider justified the com- 
parison which I have drawn, (metaphor for meta- 
phor), between the commodities which in Marxian 
economics are presented as the crystallisations o, 
labour and the goods which in pure economics 
might well be called quantities of possible satisfactions 
for crystallised wants. c Hitherto — he exclaims — only 
sorcerers have been able to believe, or to cause it 
to be believed, that by desires alone a part of our- 
selves might be glutinised into any goods whatso- 
ever.' But what does glutinise mean? To obtain the 
commodity a costs us x labour of a given kind, 
this is Marx's congealed labour. Pure economics, 
using a more general formula, states that it costs 
us that body of wants which we must leave un- 
satisfied : this is the form of congealment which pure 
economics might supply. There is no question, in 
the one case, of an objective reality, as Labriola 
seems to think, or in the other of an imagined 
sorcery ; but in both cases it is a matter of the 
literary use of imaginative expressions to denote 
mental attitudes and elaborations. In this connec- 
tion Labriola, as if to limit their range, says that 
Marx, as an author, belonged to the seventeenth 
century. May I be allowed, as a humble student 



INTERPRETATIONS 129 

of literature, and the author of several investip-a- 
tions into the character and origin of seventeenth 
century style, 1 to protest. Seventeenth century 
style consists in ingenuity, i.e. in putting cold in- 
tellectuality into an aesthetic form ; hence the forced 
comparison, the lengthy metaphor, the play on 
words and the equivocations. But Marx, on the 
contrary, misuses poetic expressions, which give the 
content of his thought with unrestrained vigour. 
We find in him just the opposite of seventeenth 
century style : not a lack of connection between 
the form and the thought, but such a violent em- 
brace of the former by the latter that the unlucky 
form sometimes runs the risk of being left suffo- 
cated. 2 

The reader will be tired of these replies to a 
negative criticism ; but negative criticism is never- 
theless all that Labriola offers us. What is his 
interpretation of Marx's thought ? Or which does 

1 See Croce Giambattista Basile e i/' Cunto de li Cunti,' Naples, 
1 89 1 ; Ricerche ispano-italiane, series I, last paragraph, {Atti 
del? Ace. Pontan; vol. xxviii, 1 898) ; I predicatori italiani del seicento 
e il gusto spagnuolo, Naples, Pierro, 1899 ; 1 trattatisti italiani del 
' concettismo' e Baltasar Gracian {Atti delFAcc. Pontan; vol. 
xxix. 1899). 

8 Labriola — who reproduces Marx's style very well here and 
there in his own — writes in his essay on ' Das Kommunistische 
Manifest] 2nd Ed., p. 79. ' The Manifesto . . . does not shed 
tears over nothing. The tears of things have already risen on 
their feet of themselves, like a spontaneously vengeful force.' 
The tears which rise on their feet may make the hair rise on 
the head of a man of moderate taste ; but the expression, al- 
though violently imaginative, is not in seventeenth century 
style. 



130 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

he accept, out of those offered ? Here Labriola is 
silent. It is true that on another occasion I believed 
that 1 discerned in his statement that 'labour- 
value is the typical premiss in Marx, without which 
all the rest would be unthinkable,' an agreement 
with my thesis. But I see now that 1 must have been 
deceived, and that the words must have another 
meaning ; which, however, warned by the unlucky 
attempt already made, I shall not attempt further 
to specify. In the meantime Sombart has built castles 
in the air ; Sorel has made hasty or premature elabo- 
rations ; the present writer has not understood 
(see p. 224). Are we then faced by a mystery? 
Our friend, Labriola, relates (p. 50) a story of 
Hegel who is said to have declared that one only 
of his pupils had understood him. (The anecdote, I 
may add, is recounted by Heinrich Heine in a much 
wittier manner). 1 Is the same thing to be repeated 
with regard to Marx's theory of value ? 

In truth, though without wishing to deny the 
difficulty of Marx's thought and of the form in 
which he expresses it, I think that the mystery may 
be at length cleared up. And I say this, not only 
on account of my inward conviction of the truth 
of my own interpretation, but also on account of 
the agreement in which 1 find myself with several 
critics, who, almost at the same moment, and by 

1 * Als Hegel auf dem Todbette lag, sagte er : — Nur einer 
hat mich verstanden ! Aber gleich darauf fugte er verdriesslich 
hinzu. Und der hat mich auch nicht verstanden ! ' {Heine. Zur 
Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutscbland. Bk. III). 



INTERPRETATIONS 1 3 1 

independent methods, have arrived at results nearly 

similar to my own. 

* Or, se im mostra la mia carta il vero, 
Non e lontano a discoprirsi il porto. . . . n 

A similar tendency shows itself in what has been 
written on the subject by Sombart, in 1894, by 
Engels in 1895, by myself in 1896, by Sorel in 
1897, by myself more at length in 1 897, and again 
by Sorel in June of last year (1898). 2 Certainly 
truth and falsehood cannot be decided by external 
signs, the intellect being the only judge of them, and 
a judge who allows scope for infinite appeals. But 
nevertheless it is natural that under the circum- 
stances pointed out above, a feeling of hope and con- 
fidence must arise that the discussion is about to be 
closed, that the problem is at length ripe for solution. 



II 

Meaning of phrase crisis in Marxianism : Sorei's view of 
equivalence of value and labour ?nostly in agreement with 
view put forward above : An attempt to examine profits 
independently of theory of value : Is not possible : Surplus 
product same as surplus value. 

I think it opportune, however, to return to those 
elaborations of Sorel, which Labriola summarily 

1 * Now, if my map shows me true, we are not far from 
the sight of our haven. . . .' (Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.) 

2 Sombart, in the Archlv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistic 
vol. vii., 1894, pp. 555-594 ; Engels in Neue Zeitxiv., vol. i., 
4-1 1, 37-44 ; Croce, Le teorie storiche del prof. Loria ; Sorel in 
the Journal des e'conomistes, no. for May 15th, 1897 ; Croce, 
Per la interpretazione e la critic a di alcuni concetti del marxism, see 
in this volume chap. in. ; Sorel, Nuovi contributi alia teoria 
marxistica del valore, in the Giornale degli economist, June 1898. 



1 32 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

judges with such seventy, in order to make some 
remarks about them, not in refutation but in sup- 
port, and to explain a certain point where there 
may seem to be disagreement between us, which 
perhaps has no reason to exist. 

But here I may be allowed to make a remark. 
Labriola is also waging war with Sorel : his book 
Discorrendo, etc., arising out of a series of friendly 
letters to Sorel, which I undertook to edit in Italy, 
is published in French with an appendix directed 
against me, and a preface directed against Sorel. 
The ground of the quarrel is especially in connec- 
tion with the so-called crisis in Marxism. 

Now if the crisis in Marxism be understood as 
the assertion of the need for a revision and correc- 
tion of the scientific ideas, of the historical beliefs, 
of the material of observed facts, which are current 
in Marxian literature, well and good : in such a 
crisis I too believe. If it means also a change in the 
programmes and practical methods, I neither agree 
nor disagree, having never concerned myself with 
the subject in dispute. If the danger is really exis- 
tent the apprehension of which seems to obsess 
and disturb Labriola, that a crisis in Marxism of 
whatever kind, or the commencement of it, may 
be neutralised by those to whose interest it is to 
lead astray and scatter the labour movement, then 
provideant consules. But whether there be crisis or 
no crisis, whether purely scientific or also practical, 
whether apprehensions are well-founded or imagin- 
ed and exaggerated, all these things have no con- 



INTERPRETATIONS 133 

nection with the questions raised by me, which re- 
late to the erroneousness of this or that theoretical 
or historical statement of Marxism, and the way in 
which this or that must be understood in order to 
be regarded as true. This is my standpoint and on 
this ground alone 1 admit discussion. I may be mis- 
taken, but this must be proved to me. But if, on 
the contrary, the only answer vouchsafed to me is 
that the crisis in Marxism results from the inter- 
national reaction, of which ingenious critics are 
taking advantage, I shall be left it is true, some- 
what bewildered ; but I shall not on this account 
be convinced that the theory of value is true, in 
the burlesque sense, for example, in which it is ex- 
pounded by Stern in his well-known propagandist 
booklet. 

Sorel at first supposes, 1 wittily enough, that 
Marx had built up different economic spheres, the 
first of which (that of labour-value) is the simplest; 
the second, including the phenomenon of an aver- 
age rate of profit, and the creation of cost of pro- 
duction, is more complex, and the third, in which 
is observed the effect of rent of land, is still more 
complex. In passing from the simple to the more 
complex sphere, we should find again the laws of 
the preceding one, modified by the new data in- 
troduced, which would have given rise to new 
phenomena. 

In his second article he abandons this interpreta- 
tion, being convinced that Marx's ideal construction 
1 In the article referred to, in the Journal des Economises. 



i 3 4 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

does not aim at supplying a complete explanation 
of the phenomena of economics by means of the 
increasing complexity of his combinations. And, in 
my opinion, he did well to abandon it ; not only 
for the excellent reason stated by him, that Marx's 
inquiry does not include an entire system of econo- 
mics, but also because the process suggested by 
him does not explain why Marx, in analysing the 
economic phenomena of the second or third sphere, 
ever used concepts whose place was only in the first one. 
It does not explain what I have called the eliptical 
comparison, and herein lies the difficulty of Marx's 
work, or rather of the literary statement of his 
thought. If the correspondence between labour and 
value is only realized in the simplified society of 
the first sphere, why insist on translating the pheno- 
mena of the second into terms of the first ? Why give 
the name transformation of surplus value to what 
makes its appearance as the natural economic result 
of capital which must have (from its very nature 
as capital) a profit ? Does Marx offer an explana- 
tion connecting ground and consequence, or does 
he not rather draw a parallel between two different 
phenomena, by which the diversities illuminating 
the origins of society are set in relief? 

But Sorel now advances to precisely this conclu- 
sion, borrowing a happy phrase from his first article: 
that Marx's work is not intended to explain by 
means of laws analogous to physical laws, but only 
to throw partial and indirect light on economic 
reality. 



INTERPRETATIONS 1 3 5 

The method which Marx employs in his inquiry, 
says Sorel, is a metaphysical instrument ; he makes a 
metaphysics of economics. This expression may be 
satisfactory or not, according to the different mean- 
ings given to the word metaphysics ; but the idea is 
accurate and true. Marx builds an ideal construction 
which helps him to explain the conditions of labour 
in capitalist society. 

What are the limits of Marx's ideal construction, 
and in what do his hypotheses consist ? I have said 
that the concept of labour-value is true for an ideal 
society, whose only goods consist in the products 
of labour, and in which there are no class distinc- 
tions. Sorel does not think it necessary to eliminate 
as I have done, the divisions of classes. But, since 
he writes : c Marx, like Ricardo, conceived a me- 
chanical society, perfectly automatic, in which com- 
petition is always at its maximum efficiency, and 
exchanges are effected by means of universal infor- 
mation ; and he supposed that the various socio- 
logical conditions are measurable in intensity, and 
that the numbers resulting can be connected by 
mathematical formulae ; hence in such a society, 
utility, demand, and commerce in commodities are 
results of the divisions of classes ; value will not in con- 
sequence be a function of this condition , although it is 
truly a function of the conditions of production ; 
utility, demand, can only appear in the forms of 
the function, in the parameters referring to the social 
divisions? Since he, I repeat, does not in his hypo- 
thesis, make labour-value dependent on the divi- 



136 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

sion of classes, it seems to me that this is practically 
to leave out the fact of the division. And it is per- 
haps clearer to omit it explicitly. 

We should have then : (i) a working economic 
society without differences of classes, law of labour- 
value ; (2) Social divisions of classes, origin of pro- 
fit, which, but only in comparison with the preceding 
type and in so far as the concepts of the former are 
carried over into the latter - , may be defined as surplus- 
value ; (3) Technical distinction between the differ- 
ent industries requiring different combinations of 
capital (different proportions of fixed and floating 
capital). Origin of the average rate of profits, which 
in relation to the preceding type, may be regarded 
as a change in, and equalisation of, surplus- values; 
(4) Appropriation of the land by part of a social 
class. Pure rent ; (5) Qualitative differences in 
land. Differential rent. Which rents, pure and dif- 
ferential, present themselves, but only in compari- 
son with the preceding types, as cut off from the 
amounts of surplus-value and of profits. Sorel 
agrees with me that the concept of labour-value, 
obtained in the manner described, is not only not 
a law in the same sense as a physical law, but is 
also not a law in the ethical sense, i.e. one that could 
be understood as a rule of what ought to exist. It 
is a law, he says, in an entiyely Marxian sense. This 
I too tried to express when I wrote in my essay : 
c It is a law in Marx's conception^ but not in economic 
reality. It is clear that we may conceive the diver- 
gencies in relation to a standard as the rebellion of 



INTERPRETATIONS 137 

reality in opposition to that standard, to which we 
have given the dignity of law.' 

It seems to me that the jurist Professor Stamm- 
ler in his book Wirthschaft und Rechtnach der mater- 
ialistischen GeschichtsauffassungJ has also made the 
mistake of interpreting Marx's concept as an ideal 
law. He is absolutely correct when, in rejecting 
Kautsky's comparison between the concept of 
labour- value and the law of gravity — which takes 
effect fully on a vacuum — whilst the resistance 
made by air leads to special results, he maintains 
that this has nothing analogous to a physical law. 
For him, on the other hand, Marx's law is justified 
(at least formally) as an attempt at investigation 
into what in the judgment of economists, granted 
the capitalist organisation of society, may be ob- 
jectively accurate. Subjective judgments may differ, 
but that does not affect what ought to be an ob- 
jective criterion, to divide the true from the false. 
But can an objective criterion ever be found within 
the sphere of economics ? Anyone who has rightly 
understood the principle of hedonistic economics 
must answer no. And if Stammler brings forward 
such an idea, it is because in his work he expressly 
intends to deny the originality of economic material 
and the independence of economics as a science. 2 

Sorel believes that Marx's method has rendered 
all the assistance of which it is capable, and cannot 
aid the study, which it is needful to make, of 

1 See pp. 266-8, 658-9. 

2 See chap. n. 



1 38 MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

modern economic conditions. If I am not mistaken 
he means that the hopes of the Marxians in regard 
to the fruitfulness of Marx's method are futile, and 
that the pages which he has written in the history 
of economics are practically all that can be pro- 
duced by it. A good part of the third volume, in 
which Marx shows himself a simple classical econ- 
omist, and the miserable and scanty output of 
Marxian economic writings subsequent to Marx, 
would suggest that Stammler's opinion is justified 
by the facts. 

But, whilst Sorel's book seems to me welcome 
in the endeavour to understand and define the 
score of Marx's economic inquiries, I cannot form 
the same judgment of another attempt made to 
reform the basis of Marx's system by rejecting his 
method, and a part of his results. I refer to a recent 
book by Dr Antonio Graziadei, 1 which has been 
much discussed during these last months. Grazi- 
adei's object is to examine profits independently of 
the theory of value : a course already indicated by 
Professor Loria, and the fallacy of which ought to 
be clearly evident at a glance, without its being 
necessary to wait for proof from the results of the 
attempt. A system of economics from which value 
is omitted, is like logic without the concept, ethics 
without duty, aesthetics without expression. It is 
economics . . . cut off from its proper sphere. 
But let us see for a moment how Graziadei 
manages the working out of his idea. 

1 La produzione capitalistiea, Turin, Bocca, 1899. 



INTERPRETATIONS 139 

In the first place he tries to prove that in Marx's 
own work the theory of profits is in itself inde- 
pendent of that of value. Profits he says, consist 
in surplus-value, i.e. in the difference between total 
labour and necessary labour. Hence it can be made 
to originate in surplus-value without starting from 
the form value itself. But he himself destroys the 
argument when further on (p. 10) he objects that 
if labour is not productive labour it does not give 
rise to profits. Precisely for that reason — we answer 
— in order to be in a position to speak of labour 
which is productive, Marx must start from value, 
and precisely for that reason, in Marx's thought, 
the theory of profits and the theory of value are 
inseparably connected. 

As to the construction, on his own account, of 
a theory of profits which is independent of that 
of value, Graziadei accomplishes this in a very 
curious way : viz. by carefully avoiding the words 
value and labour, and by speaking instead only of 
product. Profits, according to him, do not arise out 
of surplus-labour or surplus-value, but out of 
surplus-product ; hence we can, and ought, in 
theory, to start from the concept of product and 
not concern ourselves with value, which is a super- 
ficial growth of the final stage of the market. 

Surplus product ! But surplus-product, in so far 
as it is an economic surplus-product, is value. Cer- 
tainly, the capitalist who pays wages in kind, and 
in getting back again the goods advanced by him, 
also appropriates the other part of the product 



i 4 o MARXIAN THEORY OF VALUE 

(surplus-product), can, instead of taking this to 
market, consume it himself directly (as in Grazia- 
dei's hypothesis). But this does not alter the matter 
at all, because the fact that the product is not taken 
to market does not mean that it has no value in 
exchange : since it is true that the capitalist has 
obtained it by means of an exchange between him- 
self and the labourer ; which means that he has 
always assessed its value in some manner. 

And here we are again at the theory of value, 
from which we have vainly attempted to escape, 
Moreover, since Graziadei is essentially concerned 
with the economics of labour, here we are again 
at Marx's exact concept of labour value. Tamen 
usque recurrit ! * 

1 Graziadei will allow me to point out to him that it is not 
the first time that he has made discoveries that turn out to be 
equivocal. Some years ago when carrying on a controversy, in 
the review Critica soeiale, on the theory of the origin of profits 
in Marx's system, Graziadei (vol. iv., n. 22, 16th Nov. 1894, 
p. 348) wrote: * We can very readily imagine a society, in 
which profits exist, not indeed with surplus-labour, but with 
no labour. If, in fact, for all the labour now accomplished by man 
was substituted the work of machines, these latter, with a rela- 
tively small quantity of commodities would produce an enorm- 
ously greater quantity. Now, given a capitalist organisation of 
society, this technical phenomenon would afford a basis for 
a social phenomenon, viz. : that the ruling class being 
able to enjoy by itself alone the difference between the pro- 
duct and the consumption of the machine, would see at their 
disposal an excess of products over the consumption of the 
labourers, i.e., a surplus-product, much larger than when the 
feeble muscular force of man still co-operated in production.' 
But here Graziadei neglects to explain how labourers could ever 
exist, and profits of labour, in a hypothetical society, based on 
non-labour, and in which all the labour actually done by man 



INTERPRETATIONS 1 4 1 

Graziadei's book includes also some corrections 
of Marx's special theories on profits and wages. 
But I may be allowed to remark that the correc- 
tions to be called such ought to refer to the 
governing principles. New facts do not weaken a 
theory firmly established on fundamentals ; and it 
is natural that, with a change in the actual condi- 
tions, a new casuistry will arise which Marx could 
not discuss. Whatever forecasts he may have made 
in his long career as author and politician, which 
the event has proved fallacious — I do not believe 
he ever pretended : 

c Sguaiato Giosue. . . . 

Fermare il sole/ T 
Aprils 1899. 

would be done by machines. What would the labourers be 
doing there ? The work of Sisyphus or the Danaides ? In his 
hypothesis the proletariat would either be maintained by the 
charity of the ruling class, or would end by rapidly disappearing, 
destroyed by starvation. For if he supposed that the machines 
would produce automatically a superfluity of goods for the whole 
of that society, then he was simply constructing by hypothesis 
a land of Cocaigne. 

1 ' As follower of Joshua .... to stop the sun.' 



CHAPTER V. A CRITICISM OF THE MARXIAN 
LAW OF THE FALL IN THE RATE OF 
PROFITS 

Interpretation here given assumes acceptance of Marx* s main 
principles : Necessary decline in rate of profit on hypo- 
thesis of technical improvement : Two successive stages 
confused by Marx : More accurately a decline in amount 
of profit : Marx assumes that would be an increase of 
capital i Would be same capital and increase in rate of 
profits : Decline in rate of profits due to other reasons. 

This law is set forth in the third section of the 
third book (posthumous) of Das K^apital. A few 
criticisms have been made of it, which vary from 
that of Sombart, who says that it is developed in 
the most striking manner (in glanzendster Weise), to 
that of Loria, who defines it as c a metaphysical 
pistol shot (sic) from beyond the Rhine/ and 
thinks that he refutes it by an objection which is 
in fact quite inappropriate. Others have thought 
the law certainly true, but that it explained only 
partially the fact of the decline in the rate of profits 
and required to be combined with other laws already 
known to classical economics. But most of those 
who have studied Marx's economic theories have 
not examined it at all ; his opponents (like Bohm 
Bawerk) reject it by implication, when they reject 
Marx's fundamental principles ; the Marxians 



LAW OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 143 

welcome it, German fashion, humbly and submis- 
sively, without discussion, with that lack of freedom 
and intellectual originality which is noticeable in all 
their writings. 

The examination of it attempted here, rests on 
the same basis as Marx's theories, i.e. it is made 
from the standpoint of those who accept the 
essentials of these theories, and hence the premiss 
of labour-value, the distinction between fixed and 
floating capital, the view of profits as arising from 
surplus-value, and of the average rale of profits as 
arising from the equalisation, owing to competition, 
of the various rates of surplus-value. It is true that 
I accept all these things in a certain sense, which is 
not the sense of the ordinary Marxian, inasmuch 
as they are not looked upon as laws actually wot king 
in the economic world, but as the results of comparative 
investigations into different possible forms of economic 
society. But such a reservation, which relates to a 
question discussed by me at length elsewhere, 1 has 
practically no effect on the present study, whose 
results would be almost the same, even if these 
theories of Marx were interpreted in the sense 
which I consider erroneous. The object here is no 
longer to determine and define accurately Marx's 
fundamental concepts, but to see whether, from 
these concepts, even when interpreted in the current 
manner, it is ever possible in any way to deduce 
the law of the fall in the rate of profits. This task 
I think impossible. 
1 See chaps. III. and iv. 



i 4 4 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

The law was derived by Marx from the study 
of the effects of technical improvement. Marx 
states that technical improvement increases the 
amount and changes the form of the total capital, 
increasing the proportion of fixed as compared with 
floating capital, so that by this means the rate of 
profit is decreased ; the latter arises, as is well- 
known, out of the surplus-value, the product of 
the floating capital divided by the total capital. He 
illustrates the matter thus. Some technical improve- 
ment occurs ; new machines are made, which for- 
merly did not exist. The capital employed in pro- 
duction has been hitherto, we will suppose, a total 
of 1,000, divided into 500 fixed and 500 floating, 
and employing 100 labourers : the surplus-value 
= 500, i.e. the rate of it is 100 per cent ; and hence 
the rate of profit is ^^=50 per cent. In con- 
sequence of the technical improvement, and of the 
construction of new machines, the 100 labourers 
who are maintained by the variable capital of 500, 
continue still to be employed in production ; but, 
in order that this may be possible, it is necessary 
to use a larger fixed capital, which we may suppose 
200 larger than before. Hence, as the result of the 
technical improvement, there will now be a total 
capital of 1 ,200, i.e. 700 fixed and 500 floating ; and 
the rate of surplus-value remaining unchanged at 
100 per cent., the rate of profit will be f¥o°o = about 
41 per cent., i.e. will have decreased from 50 per 
cent, to 41 per cent. Hence the necessary decline 
in the rate of profit on the hypothesis of technical 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 145 

improvement. But this hypothesis is an actual every- 
day fact in modern capitalist society. Hence, the 
actual decline of the average rate of profits in 
modern capitalist society. But this law is more or 
less counteracted by other facts, which act in a con- 
trary sense more or less transitorily. Thus the fall 
is only a tendency . 

In order that our study may be clear, it is above 
all necessary to distinguish the two groups of facts, 
or the two stages in the same capitalist society 
which Marx confused and embraced in a single 
somewhat obscure view. 

The first stage is marked by the fact, pure and 
simple, of a technical improvement. Now technical 
improvement, among its logical, or what is the same 
thing, its necessary effects, in no way includes that 
of an increase in the amount of total capital em- 
ployed, nor that of leaving the quantity of total 
capital unchanged. It has rather exactly the opposite 
as its necessary and immediate effect : i.e. that of 
limiting the capital employed. It is unnecessary to 
warn the reader that we are here treating of economic 
science and that increase and decrease refer always 
to economic values. In its simplest form, supposing 
the quantity of objects produced to be constant (200 
shoes are required, and there is no reason to increase 
the production), technical progress will consist, 
purely and simply, in a saving of social expense : 
the same production at less expense. And since all 
cost, in Marx's hypothesis resolves itself into social 
labour, there will be the same production with less 



146 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

social labour. If it were not so, it would not be 
worth while to introduce this technical innovation ; 
there would be, economically, no improvement 
but either the status quo ante or a regression. 
We must not take into account the other effects 
which would arise to increase production, greater 
consumption, increase of population, etc : additional 
and extraneous facts which are not considered here, 
since we are concerned with the single fact of 
technical improvement, all other conditions remain- 
ing unchanged. And, in such a case, we cannot 
represent technical improvement with the increas- 
ing series of total capital which Marx employs, viz. 
150, 200, 300, 400, 500, etc., but with this de- 
creasing one, 150, 140, 130, 120, no, etc. And to 
keep to the illustration used above, if we suppose 
that the given technical improvement has caused a 
decrease of ^ in the total social labour required, 
we shall have in place of the original capital of 
1,000 a capital of 900, no longer made up of 500 
fixed and 500 floating, but of 450 fixed and 450 
floating. The decrease must affect proportionally 
every part of the capital since all of it is, in the 
final analysis, a product of labour. Of the 100 
original labourers, ^ i.e. 10 of them will remain 
unemployed : a fraction of the original capital will 
remain unemployed ; the quantity (or utility) of 
the goods produced will remain the same. 1 

1 We here suppose a series of productive periods already rapidly 
passed through, which may suffice to replace the whole of the 
total capital by the new technical processes. It is evident how- 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 147 

When the description of the facts is thus cor- 
rected, there is no doubt that the smaller total 
capital employed, supposing on the one hand, the 
rate of surplus-value to remain unchanged, and, on 
the other, 10 of the original labourers to be work- 
ing no longer, would absorb an amount of surplus- 
value of 450. But the rate of profit would not on 
this account be changed ; or rather, just for this 
reason the rate of profit could not be altered and 
would be expressed by f£$ (as at first -j^fo), * m6m lt 
would be as at first, 50 per cent. 

This simplest case does not then give us Marx's 
law, but this other law ; c Technical improvement, 
supposing all the other conditions remain un- 
changed, causes a decrease in the amount (not the 
rate) of surplus-value and of profits.' this law 
assumes that the -fa of the labourers left unem- 
ployed become entirely superfluous. These ten 
labourers are henceforth to be a dead weight sup- 
ported by the charity of others, or to die of starva- 
tion, or to emigrate — to a new world. Let them be 
left to their fate. Social production will remain at its 
former level, thanks to the technical improvement, 
but accomplished without their help. This is the 
hypothesis, but given this hypothesis, of what im- 
portance is the law ? To see this clearly it will suffice 

ever, that as fixed capital is replaced in successive portions, in 
a first stage, goods are used as capital, whose cost of reproduction 
no longer corresponds to their original cost of production, i.e. 
whose actual social value no longer corresponds to the original 
one. But to consider the separate stages would here cause a 
useless complication. 



148 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

to push the hypothesis yet further, as we are entitled 
to do, and suppose that the technical improvements 
continuing, the employment gradually becomes 
superfluous, not only of T V, but of J, J, | of the 
labourers, i.e. that the employment of labourers 
tends to become = o. In this case capitalist society 
as such would come entirely to an end, since the 
utility of labour, on which it is based, would come 
to an end. Where there is nothing the King loses 
his rights ; and where labour has no utility the 
capitalist loses his. The ex-capitalists would have 
no more workmen to impoverish, but would be 
changed into the owners of automatic fountains of 
wealth ; like those fortunate mortals in the fable 
enriched by charmed knives, by wonderful lamps, 
by gardens producing with instantaneous and spon- 
taneous energy all God's gifts. In other words the 
law here resolves itself into a truism. 

But Marx did not think of this truism. He wished 
to determine exactly the organic law of the varia- 
tions in the rate of profits. In fact — as is seen in 
the illustration given — he does not at all suppose 
that the energy of labour may become superfluous ; 
but rather that the labourers will find fresh em- 
ployment with an increase in the original fixed 
capital. Given technical improvement and produc- 
tion also will be increased ; this is the second stage 
which he considers. The ioo labourers are still all 
working, the fixed capital with which they work 
must be increased from 500 to 700, and the total 
has hence become 1 200. The law which he deduces, 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 149 

of the fall in the rate of profits (in the illustration, 
from 50 per cent, to 41 per cent.) is not a truism ; 
on the contrary it presents itself with all the im- 
portance and originality of a scientific discovery. 
All depends on seeing whether in the scientific 
discovery we have indeed — the truth. 

The crux of Marx's proof lies in the statement ; 
that the labourers who would have had to remain 
unemployed, find on the contrary employment, but 
with a capital increased by so much ( = 200) over the 
original. Is this statement correct ? On what does 
Marx base it ? 

To this fundamental proposition my criticism 
refers, itself equally fundamental. If it is admitted 
it amounts to a most complete denial of the truth of 
the Marxian law. Nevertheless I state my idea in 
the form of a criticism and doubtfully^ because, in 
dealing with a thinker of Mark's rank, it is necessary 
to proceed cautiously, and to remember (which I do 
not forget) that several times errors ascribed to him 
have been explained as mistakes of his opponents. 

For what reason, I ask myself, do the ten un- 
occupied labourers, in order to be employed afresh, 
require a constant capital larger than the original? 

The technical improvement has not diminished 
the natural utility of the production (also in our 
hypothesis it has not increased it either, but has 
left it unchanged) ; but it has only diminished its 
value. There will be then, with the improved tech- 
nical organisation, raw materials, tools, clothing, 
foodstuffs, etc., of the same total natural utility as 



iSo CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

at first. The economic value of all these products 
is diminished, because in them (to employ the 
metaphor chosen by Marx), is congealed a smaller 
quantity of labour, i.e. less by the work of ten 
labourers. But from the point of view of power to 
satisfy wants, the raw materials, the tools, the 
clothing, the means of sustenance, etc., remain, in 
virtue of the technical improvement, of the same 
rank as at first. If then capitalists and workpeople 
have remained as temperate as before, and their 
standard of life has not risen (and this is in the hy- 
pothesis), the production will offer as at first means 
of employment and means of sustenance for the 
ten labourers left unoccupied. By re-employing 
them, i.e. maintaining them with the original means 
of subsistence, and setting them to work on the 
original raw materials or their new products, the 
capitalists will increase their production, or — what 
is the same thing — will improve its quality. But 
since we know that, economically, the value of that 
capital has diminished, it will come about that a 
capital economically smaller will absorb the same 
energy of labour as formerly, i.e. the same amount 
of profits ; and an equal amount of profits with a 
smaller total capital means an increased rate of 
profits. Exactly the opposite to what Marx thought 
it possible to prove. 

Turning to our illustration, the ten labourers 
will find employment with a capital which, like the 
utility, has remained the same, but economically 
has decreased to 900. This means that the rate of 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 151 

profits has increased from f^ to fJJ, i.e. from 
50 per cent, to about 55 per cent. As to the rate 
of surplus-value, since the entire value of the total 
capital is reduced, it must no longer be calculated, 
as before the technical improvement, as f#[J, nor 
as in the first stage we considered (in which the 
technical improvement had made a portion of the 
labour entirely superfluous) as ff# 3 but as ff-g-, i.e. 
it will no longer be 100 per cent., but will have 
risen to about 1 1 1 per cent. 

To this criticism of mine I have found no answer, 
either explicit or implicit, in Marx's work. Only 
in one passage, where he speaks of the counteract- 
ing causes, and in particular of surplus population 
(Chap, xiv., § iv.), he hints at the case where 
labour power may be re-employed with a minimum 
capital. It may be said that here Marx passed close 
to the difficulty, without striking upon it, i.e. with- 
out becoming aware of its importance. And, if he 
had struck on it, I doubt whether he would have 
overcome it and passed on ; I think rather that his 
theory would have gone to pieces. 

I foresee that it may be said : you have assumed 
that, owing to the technical improvement, not only 
would a number of labourers remain unemployed, 
but also a fraction of the original total capital, i.e. 
of means of production and means of subsistence ; 
and when the labourers are re-employed, it is true 
that during the new cycle of production, other frac- 
tions of unoccupied capital will not unite with the 
original fractions, but precisely for this reason the 






152 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

quantity of production which will result will be in- 
creased, and in the next cycle of production a still 
greater fraction of unoccupied capital will add itself, 
unless the ten labourers do not continue to be re- 
employed, in which case the un-occupied fraction 
will be smaller, but the increase will become con- 
stant. Now all these means of production and of 
sustenance will not be consumed (or will be par- 
tially consumed and partially saved), by the capi- 
talist class, and hence there will be an increasing 
accumulation. The quantities of goods saved, owing 
to the impulsion of economic interest will not re- 
main un-used in warehouses or strong boxes, but 
will be thrown on the market as capital seeking 
employment. This will increase the rate of wages, 
and hence will have a depressing effect on the rate 
of profits. Very good, but in such a case we are 
outside the Marxian law. The factor here consider- 
ed, is no longer technical improvement taken by 
itself, but saving, which may be, as stated, encour- 
aged by technical progress, but cannot be inferred 
from it. For it is true that, if we suppose the case 
of extravagant capitalists, saving, in spite of tech- 
nical improvement will not take place. And as 
technical improvement encourages saving, so the 
latter, in its turn, by increasing wages, encourages 
the increase of population, and hence the reduction 
of wages, and once again a rise in the rate of profits. 
But, when saving and the increase of population 
come upon the scene we are already within the 
sphere of the law of demand and supply, i.e. of 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 153 

ordinary, accredited economics, which Marx de- 
spised as vulgar, and out of dislike of which he 
devised his law of the fall in the rate of profits 
yielded by the above combination of capital owing 
to the effect of technical improvement. I, indeed, 
believe that only the ordinary law of demand and 
supply can explain the variations in the rate of 
profit : but to return to it is not indeed to defend 
Marx's thesis, but rather to ratify its condem- 
nation. 

However it is regarded, this thesis seems to me 
indefensible ; and even more indefensible if, leav- 
ing aside for a moment logical trains of reasoning 
and arithmetical calculations, we look at it with the 
clear intuition of common sense. See here — to 
follow the strict hypothesis set forth by Marx — 
on one side a capitalist class, and on the other a 
proletarian class. What effect does technical im- 
provement have ? It increases the wealth in the 
hands of the capitalist class. Is it not intuitively 
evident that, as a result of technical improvement, 
the capitalists can, by anticipating commodities 
whose value is continually decreasing^ obtain the same 
services which they obtained at first from the pro- 
letariat ? And that hence the relation between value 
of services and value of capital will change in favour 
of the former, i.e. that the rate of profits will in- 
crease ? When commodities (capital) are anticipat- 
ed, which formerly were reproduced by five hours 
of labour and now are reproduced by four, the 
workman will continue to work ten hours. Former- 



154 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

ly with five there were ten ; now with four there 
is similarly ten. The sponge costs less, but the 
quantity of water with which it is saturated is the 
same. How could Marx suppose that after techni- 
cal improvement, the expenses of the capitalists 
would always increase, so that proportionally pro- 
fits would be in a state of perpetual decline, and 
would end by making, in face of the total costs, a 
most wretched figure ? 

Marx's mistake has been that he has inadvert- 
ently attributed a greater value to the fixed capital, 
which after the technical improvement is worked 
by the same labourers as before. Certainly anyone 
who looks at a society in two successive stages of 
technical development, will find in the second stage 
a greater number of machines and of tools of every 
kind. This is a question of statistics^ not of economics. 
Capital (and Marx appears to have neglected this 
point for the moment) is not estimated by its physi- 
cal extension, but by its economic value. And econo- 
mically that capital (supposing all the other condi- 
tions remain constant) must be wouh less ; otherwise 
no technical improvement would have taken place. 

An external circumstance which might serve to 
explain Marx's error is the fact that the third book 
of Das Capital is a posthumous work, some parts of 
which are hardly sketched out, and amongst these 
that of the law of the rate ofpro f its^ which, moreover, 
does not relate to the establishment of principles^ but, 
being a consequence and an application of these, 
was perhaps not worked out to the same extent as 



OF I-AIT IN RATK OK PROMTS ,^ 

the fundamental or centra] part <>i the theory.' li 
ii probable that the author, h he could have gone 

over his rough di.ili again, would have materially 

modified it or entirely discarded it. But perhaps 

some interna] reason could also he found (or this 

strange mistake, in that Marx always misused the 
comparative method without disclosing any distinct 
knowledge oi his procedure. And it might be that, 
as already in his earlier investigations, he perpetu 
ally transferred labour value from a hypothetical 

society to the actual capitalist society, so in this 
new problem he has been led to estimate the 
worth ol the technical capital in a more advanced 

society at the rate of value of that in a less advanced 
society, [n this impossible attempt hi:, method has 
here broken m \\r< hands. 

As we have disputed the actual basis ol the 

Marxian law, it seems indeed superfluous to follow 

out its further developments, which are advanced 
in a form worked out with but hide care. It is 
enough to remark that in these developments, as 

in general, throughout /)<is /\, //>//<//, there 18 i 
COntinUOUS medley of theoieln.il dedm t ions and 

historical descriptions, oi logical and oi material 
connections. The defect, however, becomes in this 
instant ean advantage, bei aw^- many oi theobserva 

tions made by Marx, understood as historical 

1 The explanation oi the way in which the average nti oi 

profit in c. IhIoiii;, id ill'- fundamental part oi the third book 
• •I Dat A,//<//\// .mil Marx muil havt thought if out togethei 

wii li i h< fundamental < hapten in i In In i Ihm.I 



156 CRITICISM OF MARXIAN LAW 

descriptions of what usually happens in modern 
society, will be found to be true and can be saved 
from the shipwreck, as regards the theory of the 
law, with which by chance they are feebly connected. 
And it would even be possible to make such an 
investigation in respect to that very portion which 
we have disputed, i.e. to enquire whaty»£#, actually 
observed by him, could have impelled Marx to 
construct his law, i.e. to give of these facts an ex- 
planation which is theoretically unjustifiable. 

Marx attributed the greatest importance to the 
discovery of the law of the fall in the rate of profits. 
Herein Jay for him c the mystery over which all 
economists from Adam Smith onwards have toiled' ; 
and in the different attempts to solve the problem 
he saw the explanation of the divergence between 
the various schools of economists. Ricardo's be- 
wilderment in face of the phenomenon of the pro- 
gressive decrease in the rate of profits seemed to 
him fresh evidence of the earnestness of mind 
of that writer, who discerned the vital importance 
of the problem for capitalist society. That the 
solution had not been found before his, Marx's, 
time, appeared to him easily explicable, when it was 
remembered that until then political economy had 
sought gropingly for the distinction between fixed 
and floating capital without succeeding in formulat- 
ing it, and had not been able to explain surplus- 
value in distinction from profits, nor profit itself in 
its purity, independently of the separate fractions 
of it in competition amongst themselves ; and that, 



OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 157 

in the end, it had been unable to analyse completely 
the difference in the organic composition of capital, 
and much less, the formation of the general rate of 
profits. 

His explanation being now rejected, a double 
problem presents itself. The first question relates to 
fact. It is needful to ask : does the fact spoken of 
actually exist, and how does it exist ? Has a gradual 
decline in the rate of profits been ascertained ? And 
in which countries, and in what circumstances ? The 
second question relates to the cause : since, whilst 
we have seen that there could only be one economic 
reason for the phenomenon, (the law of demand 
and supply), there may be several historical causes, 
and these may vary in different cases. The decline 
in the rate of profits may happen owing to a nominal 
increase in wages due to an increase in the rent of 
land, or it may happen owing to a real increase in 
wages due to stronger organisation among the 
workpeople, or it may happen owing to an increase, 
also real, in wages resulting from saving and from 
growing accumulations, which increase the capital 
in search of employment. This investigation must 
be made without prejudices, whether optimistic 
or pessimistic, apologetic or controversial ; and 
economists have sinned but too often in all these 
ways. The listeners have seized upon the result of 
limited and qualified investigations, now in order 
to sing a hymn tc the spontaneous force of progress, 
which will gradually cause the disappearance of 
capitalists or reduce interest to \ per cent. ; now in 






158 LAW OF FALL IN RATE OF PROFITS 

order to terrify their audience by a spectacle no less 
fantastic, of landed proprietors as the sole owners 
of all the goods of society I 1 

May 1899. 

1 This is the case contemplated by Ricardo in the celebrated 
§ 44 of chapter vi, On Profits : Marx appears to attach ittle im- 
portance to this case, having complete faith in the continued 
technical progress of agriculture, not to speak of other counter- 
acting causes. It is necessary to add that Marx in conformity 
with his law, maintains that the rent of land also has a tendency 
to fall, although it may increase its total amount, or its propor- 
tion in reference to industrial profits : see vol. iii, 223-4. 



CHAPTER VI. ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

TWO LETTERS TO PROFESSOR V. PARETO 

I 

Need for more comprehensive definition of the economic prin- 
ciple : Reasons why the mechanical conception erroneous^ 
economic fact capable of appraisement : Cannot be scale 
of values for particular action: Economic datum a fact 
of human activity : Distinction and connection between 
pleasure and choice: Economic datum a fact of will: 
Knowledge a necessary presupposition of will ; Distinction 
between technical and economic : Analogy of logic and 
aesthetic: Complete definition of economic datum. 

Esteemed Friend, 

On reading the little paper, 
which you were courteous enough to send me, on 
how to state the problem of pure economics, 1 I at 
once felt a desire to discuss the subject with you. 
Other occupations have obliged me to defer the 
satisfaction of this wish until now ; and this has 
been fortunate. The extracts from your new and 
still unpublished treatise on pure economics, which 
came out in the March number of this Review, 2 
have obliged me to abandon in part the scheme of 

1 Comment se pose le probleme de Feconomie pure. Paper read in 
December 1898 to the Societe Stella. 

2 Giornale degli economist^ March 1900, pp. 216-235. 



160 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

thought which I had in mind ; for I saw from them 
that you had modified some of those points in your 
thesis, which seemed to me most open to dispute. 
I have on several occasions heard something like 
a feeling of distaste expressed for the endless dis- 
cussions about value and the economic principle 
which absorb the energies of economic science. It 
is said that if this splitting of hairs over the 
scholastic accuracy of its principle were abandoned, 
the science might throw light on historical and 
practical questions which concern the welfare of 
human society. Apparently you have not allowed 
yourself to be alarmed by the threatened dis- 
taste of readers ; nor indeed am I. Can we 
silence the doubts which disturb us ? Could we 
have assurance whilst silencing these doubts 
that we were not endangering just those practical 
issues which the majority have at heart ? Issues 
which we ourselves have at heart since we 
are certainly not able, like the monks of old, to 
free ourselves from interest in the affahs of the 
age. May not science be, as Leibniz said, quo magis 
speculativa, magis practica ? We must then go our 
way, and endeavour to satisfy our doubts, with all 
the caution and self-criticism of which we are 
capable ; since they cannot be suppressed. On the 
other hand we should endeavour also not to offer our 
solutions to the public except when our knowledge, 
— wide if it may be so (yet necessarily imperfect) — 
of the literature on the subject, gives us some con- 
fidence that we are not repeating things already 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 161 

stated. Unless indeed, other considerations make 
us think it opportune to repeat and to impress 
things which have been stated, but without sufficient 
emphasis. 

The new school of economic thought, of which 
you are such a worthy representative, has a merit 
of no small significance. It has reacted against the 
anti-scientific tendencies of the historical and 
empirical schools, and has restored the concept of 
a science of pure economics. This means indeed 
nothing more than a science which is science ; the 
word pure, unless tautologous, is an explanation 
added for those who are ignorant or unmindful of 
what a science is. Economics is neither history nor 
discussion of practical issues : it is a science 
possessing its own principle, which is indeed called 
the economic principle. 

But, as I had occasion to remark at another time, 1 
I do not consider that this principle whose funda- 
mental character is asserted, has hitherto been 
grasped in its individuality, nor conveniently de- 
fined in relation to other groups of facts, that is to 
the principles of other sciences. Of those concep- 
tions of it which seem to me erroneous^ the chief 
ones can be reduced to four which I will call the 
mechanical^ the hedonistic^ the technological and the 
egoistic. 

You have now rejected the first two, because 
you think that mechanical and hedonistic consider- 

1 Rivista di sociologia, III.no. vi., pp. 7 46-8, see Mater ialismio 
Storico, pp. 193-208. 
M 



1 62 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

ations belong to metaphysics and psychology. But 
I acknowledge that I am dissatisfied with your 
method of arriving at this praiseworthy rejection. 

You no longer say, indeed, as in your previous 
essay : c L'economie pure n'est pas seulement sem- 
blable a la mechanique : c'est, a proprement parler, 
un genre de mechanique.' But you still say that 
1 Pure economics employs the same methods as 
rational mechanics, and has many points of contact 
with this science.' Although you do not pause over 
the mechanical considerations, it is not from a clear 
conviction that a datum in economics, as such, is 
quite different from a datum in mechanics ; but 
merely because it seems to you convenient to omit 
such considerations, of which you do not deny, but 
rather admit, the possibility. 

Now I on the contrary, say decisively that the 
data of economics is not that of mechanics, or that 
there is no transition from the mechanical aspect 
of a fact to the economic aspect ; and that the very 
possibility of the mechanical point of view is ex- 
cluded, not as a thing which may or may not be 
abstracted from, but as a contradiction in terms, 
which it is needful to shun. 

Do you wish for the simplest and clearest proof 
of the non-mechanical nature of the economic 
principle ? Note, then, that in the data of econo- 
mics a quality appears which is on the contrary re- 
pugnant to that of mechanics. To an economic fact 
words can be applied which express approval or dis- 
approval. Man behaves economically well or ill, with 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 163 

gain or loss, suitably or unsuitably : he behaves, in 
short, economically or uneconomically . A fact in econo- 
mics is, therefore, capable of appraisement (positive 
or negative) ; whilst a fact in mechanics is a mere 
fact, to which praise or blame can only be attached 
metaphorically. 

It seems to me that on this point we ought easily 
to be agreed. To ascertain it, it is sufficient to 
appeal to internal observation. This shows us the 
fundamental distinction between the mechanical 
and the teleological, between mere fact and value. 
If I am not mistaken, you assign to metaphysics 
the problem of reducing the teleological to the 
mechanical, value to mere fact. But observe that 
metaphysics cannot get rid of the distinction ; and 
will only labour, with greater or less good luck, at 
its old business of reconciling opposites, or of de- 
riving two contraries from one unity. 

I foresee what may be advanced against this as- 
sertion of the non-mechanical nature of the econo- 
mic principle. It may be said : What is not mechani- 
cal, is not measurable ; and economic values, on the 
contrary, are measured. Although hitherto the unit 
of measurement has not been found, it is yet a 
fact that we distinguish very readily larger and 
smaller y greater and least values and construct scales 
of values. This suffices to establish the measm ability 
and hence the essentially mechanical nature of 
economic value. Look at the economic man y who has 
before him a series of possible actions <3, b y c, d y e y 
/,...; which have for him a decreasing value, 



164 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

indicated by the numbers 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 . . . just 
because he measures value, he decides on the action 
a=io, and not on c=8 orf=6. 

And there is no fault in the deduction granted 
the existence of the scale of values, which we have 
just illustrated by an example. Granted the existence: 
but, supposing this to be an illusion of ours ? If the 
man in the example, instead of being the homo 
ceconomicus were the homo utopicus or heterocosmicus, 
not to be found even in imaginative constructions ? 

This is precisely my opinion. The supposed scale 
of values is an absurdity. When the homo ceconomicus 
in the given example, selects a, all the other actions 
(£, c, d, e y f . . .) are not for him values smaller 
than a ; they are merely non-a ; they are what he 
rejects ; they are non-values. 

If then the homo ceconomicus could not have a, 
he would be acting under different conditions : under 
conditions without a. Change the conditions and 
the economic action — as is well known — changes 
also. And let us suppose that the conditions are 
such that, for the individual acting, b represents 
the action selected by him ; and c y d y e,f . . . those 
which he omits to do, and which are all non-b, i.e. 
have no value. 

If the conditions change again and it is supposed 
that the individual decides on c, and then on d, and 
then on e, and so on. These different economic 
actions, each arising under particular conditions, are 
incommensurable amongst themselves. They are 
different ; but each is perfectly adapted to the given 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 16 5 

conditions, and can only be judged in reference to 
these conditions. 

But then what are these numbers, 10, 9, 8, 7, 
6 . . . ? They are symbols, symbols of what ? What 
is the reality beneath the numerical symbol ? The 
reality is the alteration in the actual conditions ; and 
these n umbers show a succession of changes : neither 
more nor less than is indicated by the alphabetic 
series, for which they are substituted. 

The absurdity involved in the notion of greater 
or smaller values is, in short, the assumption that 
an individual may be at the same moment under 
different conditions. The homo ceconomicus is not at 
the same moment in a, b y c, d, e,f . . . but when 
he is in b, he is no longer in a ; when he is in c 
he is no longer in b. He has before him only one 
action, approved by him ; this action rules out all 
the others which are infinite, and which for him 
are only actions not preferred (non-values). 

Certainly physical objects form part of the data 
of economics ; and these, just because they are 
physical, are measurable. But economics does not 
consider physical things and objects, but actions. 
The physical object is merely the brute matter of 
an economic act : in measuring it we remain in the 
physical world, we do not pass over to that of 
economics, or else, when measured, the economic 
fact has become volatile. You say that c political 
economy only concerns itself with choices, which 
fall on things that are variable in quantity and cap- 
able of measurement ' ; but pardon me, dear friend, 



1 66 OX THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

you would be much perplexed if you had to justify 
this wholly arbitrary limitation ; and if you had to 
show that the attribute measurabilility influences 
in any way the attribute of belonging to economics. 

I think that I have explained, shortly, but ade- 
quately for a wise man like yourself, the reasons 
why the mechanical conception of the economic 
principle is untenable. If calculations and measure- 
ments come into problems that are called economic 
they do so just in so far as these are not problems 
in pure economics. 

This non-mechanical datum, which is an econo- 
mic datum, vou call choice. And this is all right. 
But to choose means to choose consciously. A choice 
made unconsciously, is either not a choice or not 
unconscious. You speak of the unconsi 
of man ; but these cannot be the actions of the man 
: ; ; sc far as he is man but movements of man in so 
faros he is also . . They are instinctive move- 

ments ; and instinct is not cho::: cepi 

. Hence the examples you bring forward of 
dogs, of cats, of sparrows, ot rats, and ot asses 
from Burida , are not tacts of ". :: ; and hence 
are not economic facts. You consider animal econo- 
mics as an unfruitful science, which exhausts itself 
in descriptions. Look more closely and you will 
see that this science does not exist An economics 
of the animals, understood in the sense of the 
naturalists, has not been written, not because it is 
not worth while, but because write 

it. Whence could it be obtained unless from books 









ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 167 

such as the Roman de Renart and the Animali 

parlanti ? 

This analysis ought to lead us to conceive of an 
economic datum as an act of man ; i.e. as 2, fact of 
human activity. 

And from this recognition is inferred in its turn 
the true criticism of the hedonistic conception of 
the economic principle. You say that c the equations 
of pure economics express merely the fact of a 
choice, and can be drawn up independently of the 
ideas of pleasure and pain,' but you admit at the 
same time that the fact of the choice c can be ex- 
pressed equally well as a fact of pleasure.' 

It is true that every case of economic choice is 
at the same time, a case of feeling : of agreeable 
feeling if the economic choice is rightly made, of 
disagreeable feeling, if it is ill made. Man's activity 
develops itself in the human mind, not under a 
pneumatic bell, and an activity which develops 
rightly, brings as its reflex, a feeling of pleasure, 
that which develops badly, one of displeasure. 
What is economically useful, is, at the same time 
pleasurable. 

But this judgment cannot be converted. The 
pleasurable is not always economically useful. The 
mistake in the hedonist theory consists in making 
this conversion. Pleasure may appear unaccom- 
panied by man's activity, or may be accompanied 
by a human activity which is not economic. Here- 
in lies the fundamental distinction between pleasure 
and choice. A choice, is in the concrete, inseparable 



1 68 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

from the feeling of pleasure and displeasure ; but 
this feeling is separable from choice^ and may in fact 
exist independently of it. 

If psychology be understood (as it is usually 
understood) as the science of psychical mechanism, 
economics is not a psychological science ; this Herr 
von Ehrenfels fails to grasp. I do not know whether 
you have read the two volumes hitherto published 
on the System dey JVerttheorie. 1 After devoting some 
hundred pages to psychological disquisitions — 
which I do not mean to discuss here — he wishes, 
finally, to prove that his definitions of value re- 
main sound, from whatever theory of psychology 
you start. He does this as he asserts (§ 87), not 
because he is doubtful of himself, but to safeguard 
his economic conclusions, which are so important 
for the practical problems of life, from unjustified 
attacks based on the standpoints of schools of 
psychology other than his own, the method of the 
barrister, who composes an apparent conclusion, 
and makes several demands that are connected 
therewith subordinately. It is true that there is no 
need for economists to spend their time on details 
of theoretical psychology ; so true that Professor 
Ehrenfels might .spare us his : but is it not true 
that economics remains the same whatever psycho- 
logical theory is accepted. The unity of science 

1 Dr Christian v. Ehrenfels (Professor at Prague Uni- 
versity) : System der JVerttheorie, vol. 1, Allgemeine JVerttheorie, 
Psychologie des Begehrens, Leipzig, Reisland, 1897 ; vol. 11, 
Qrundzilge einer Ethik, the same, 1898. 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 169 

means that a modification at one point is never 
without some reaction on the others ; and the re- 
action is greatest when it is a question of the way 
of conceiving two facts, distinct but inseparable, 
like the economic and the psychical fact. 

An economic datum is not then a hedonistic 
datum, nor, in general, a mechanical datum. But 
as the fact of man's activity, it still remains to de- 
termine whether it is a fact of knowledge or of will : 
whether it is theoretical or practical. 

You, who conceive it as choice, can have no 
doubt that it is a fact of practical activity, i.e. of 
will. This is also my own conclusion. To choose 
something can only mean to will it. 

But you somewhat obscure the conclusion now 
indicated when you speak of logical and illogical 
actions, and place actions properly economic 
amongst the former. Logical and illogical bring 
us back to theoretical activity. A logical or illogical 
action is a common way of speaking ; but it is not 
a way of speaking exactly or accurately. The logical 
work of thought is quite distinct from the action of 
the will. To reason is not to will. 

Nor is to will to reason ; but the will presupposes 
thought and hence logic. He who does not think, 
cannot even will. I mean by willing, what is known 
to us by the evidence of our consciousness ; not 
Schopenhauer's metaphysical will. 

In knowledge, in so far as it is a necessary pre- 
supposition of economic action, is found, if not a 
justification, an explanation of your phrases about 



170 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

logical and illogical actions. Eco 01 c act 

a) way-, ' | logical actions, i.e. 

; by Jo; • . Ik v it 

carefully the two i 

distinction between the two -m i atisen theettone- 
oui conception of the economic principle a: a technological 
fact* I have this 

technical and economic, and I may 
be allowed 4 o refer both to what I have wt to 

Itl my r< ■ er\ book IVirihichafl unci 

Rechty i nd to th< * analyses in my recent 

im or j the £//£/* 

af the eco - 
but a technu wrho 

wishei to ■'• .■■■* a glance, tin - r ween 

the technical and the ( . , , care- 

fully iti whal a technical ertor and in what 

economic error re . ly COnsil linical error 

is ignorance of the laws of the material on which 
v/e wisli to work : for : belief thai i 

possible to put very heavy beams of iron on a 
delicate wall, without the latter falling into ru 

An economic error is the not aiming directly at one's 
own object ; to wish this and that, ue* not really 
to wish either this or that A technical error is an 
error of kno an econoiiiii error is an error 

of will. lie who make'; a technical mistake wiD be 
called, if the mistake is a stupid one, an ignoramus; 

fie who makes an economii mi'. take, is a man who 
doe\ not know how to behave in life : a weak and 



ON TIIK ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 171 

inconclusive person. And, as is well known and 
proverbial, people can be learned without being men 
(practical or complete). 

Thus an economic fact is a fact of ptactkal 
activity. 1 lave we attained our object in this defini- 
tion ? Not yet. The definition is still incomplete 
and to complete it we must not only cross another 
expanse of sea, but avoid another rock : viz. that 
of the conception of economic data as egoistic data. 

This error arises as follows : if an economic fact 
is a practical activity, it is still necessary to say how 
this activity is distinguished from moral activity. 
But moral activity is defined as altruistic ; then, it 
is inferred, economic data will be egoistic. Into this 
mistake has fallen, amongst others, our able Pro 

fessor Pantaleoni, in his Principi cTeconomia j>ura y 
and in other writings. 

Thccgoistic']* not something merely different from 
a moral fact ; it is the antithesis of it ; it is the immoral. 
In this way, by making the economic principle 
equivalent to an egoistic fact, instead of distinguish- 
ing economics from morality, we should be subor- 
dinating the former to the latter, or rather should 
deny it any right to exist, recognising it as something 
merely negative^ as adeviation from moral activity. 

A datum in economics is quite different. It does 
not form an antithesis to a moral datum ; but is 
in the peaceable relation of condition to condi- 
tioned. It is the general condition which makes the 
rise of ethical activity possible. In the concrete, 
every action (volition) of man is either moral or 



172 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

immoral, since no actions are morally indifferent. 
But both the moral and the immoral are economic 
actions ; which means that the economic action, 
taken by itself, is neither moral nor immoral. 
Strength of character, for example, is needed, both 
by the honest man and by the cheat. 

It seems to me that you approach gropingly to 
this conception of the economic principle, as re- 
lating to practical actions, which taken in the 
abstract, are neither moral nor immoral ; when at 
one point in your last essay, you exclude from 
economic consideration choices^ which have an altru- 
istic motive ; and further on, exclude also those 
which are immoral. Now, since choices are necessarily 
either altruistic or egoistic, either moral or immoral, 
you have no way of escaping from the difficulty 
except the one which 1 suggest ; to regard economics 
as concerned with practical activity in so far as it is 
(abstractly) emptied of all content, moral or immoral. 

I might enlarge further on this distinction and 
show how it has an analogy in the sphere of theo- 
retical activity, where the relation of economics to 
ethics is repeated in the relation of aesthetics to 
logic. And I might point out the reason why 
scientific and aesthetic productions cannot be sub- 
jects of economic science, i.e. are not economic 
products. The reason given, in this connection, by 
Professor Ehrenfels, is, to say the least of it, curious : 
he remarks that : ( the relations of value upon 
which the data of logic and aesthetics rest, are so 
simple that they do not demand a special economic 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 173 

theory.' It should not be difficult to see that logical 
and aesthetic values are theoretical and not practical 
values, whereas economic value is a practical value, 
and that it is impossible to unite an economics of the 
theoretical as such. When, some years ago, the 
lamented Mazzola sent me the introduction in 
which he had discussed Economics and Art, I had 
occasion to write to him and afterwards to say to 
him by word of mouth, that much more funda- 
mental relations might be discovered between the 
two groups of phenomena ; and he urged me to 
expound my observations and inquiries. This I 
have done in the essay on Estetica, referred to above. 
I am sorry to be obliged to refer so many times in 
writing to you and to the public. But here the need 
for brevity and clearness constrains me. 

This, then, is a rapid statement of how I arrive 
at the definition of the data of economics, which 
I should like to see at the beginning of every 
economic treatise. The data of economics are thepractical 
activities of men in so far as they are considered as 
such, independent of any moral or immoral determination. 

Granted this definition, and it will be seen also 
that the concept of utility, or of 'value or of ofelimity, 
is nothing but the economic action itself, in so far 
as it is rightly 'managed, i.e. in so far as it is really 
economic. In the same way as the true is thinking 
activity itself, and the good is moral activity itself. 

And to speak of things (physical objects) as 
having or not having value, will appear simply a 
metaphorical usage to express those causes which we 



174 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

think efficacious to produce the effects which we desire, 
and which are therefore our ends. A is worth b, the 
value of a is b, does not mean (the economists of 
the new school knew it well) a=b ; nor even as is 
said a > b ; but that a has i;tf/#£ for us, and b has 
not. And value — as you know — exists only at the 
moment of exchange, i.e. of choice. 

To connect with these general propositions the 
different problems which are said to belong to 
economic science, is the task of the writer of a 
special treatise on economics. It is your task, 
esteemed friend, if after having studied these 
general propositions, they seem to you acceptable. 
To me it seems that they alone are able to safe- 
guard the independence of economics, not only as 
distinct from History and Practice but as distinct from 
Mechanics, Psychology, Theory of knowledge, and Ethics. 

Naples, 15 th May 1900. 1 

II 

Disagreement (i) about method (2) postulates : (i) Nothing 
arbitrary in economic method, analogy of classificatory 
sciences erroneous ; (2) Metaphysical postulate that facts 
of human activity same as physical facts erroneous : De- 
finition of practical activity in so far as admits of defini- 
tion : Moral and economic activity and approval: Econo- 
mic and moral remorse ; Economic scale of values. 

Esteemed Friend, 

Our disagreement concerning 

the nature of economic data has two chief sources : 

1 Pareto answered this letter in the same journal, Giornale 
degli economist'^ August, 1900, pp. 139-162. 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 175 

disagreement on a question of method and disagree- 
ment on a question of postulates. I acknowledge 
that one object of my first letter was to obtain from 
you such explanations as might set clearly in relief 
our disagreement on the two points indicated. — 
To reduce controversies to their simplest terms, 
to expose ultimate oppositions, is, you will agree, 
an approach to truth. I will explain briefly the two 
points at issue. In regard to that of method, although 
I agree with you in upholding the claims of a pro- 
cedure that is logical, abstract and scientific, as 
compared with one that is historical (or synthetic, 
as you say), I cannot in addition allow that the 
former procedure involves something of the nature 
of an arbitrary choice, or that it can be worked out 
equally well in either of two ways. You talk of 
cutting away a slice from a concrete phenomenon, 
and examining this by itself; but I inquire how 
you manage to cut away that slice ? for it is no 
question here of a piece of bread or of cheese into 
which we can actually put the knife, but of a series 
of representations which we have in our conscious- 
ness, and into which we can insert nothing except 
the light of our mental analysis. In order to cut 
off your slice you would thus have to carry out a 
logical analysis ; i.e. tQ_do~at the outset what you 
propose to do subsequently. Your cutting off of the 
slice is indeed an answer to the problem of the quid 
in which an economic fact consists. You assume the 
existence of a test to distinguish what you take for 
the subject of your exposition from what you leave 



176 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

aside. But the test or guiding concept must be 
supplied by the very nature of the theory, and must 
be in conformity with it. 

Would it for instance be in conformity with the 
nature of the thing, to cut away, as you wish to do, 
only that group of economic facts which relates to 
objects capable of measurement ? What intrinsic 
connection is there between this merely accidental 
attribute, measurability, of the objects which enter 
into an economic action, and the economic action 
itself? Does measurability lead to a modification 
in the economic fact by changing its nature, i.e. by 
giving rise to another fact ? If so, you must prove 
it. I, for my part, cannot see that an economic 
action changes its nature whether it relates to a sack 
of potatoes, or consists in an exchange of protesta- 
tions of affection ! 

In your reply you refer to the need of avoiding 
waste of time over matters that are too simple, for 
which c it is not worth while to set in motion the 
great machine of mathematical reasoning.' But this 
need relates to the pedagogy of the professional 
chair or of the book, not to the science in itself, 
which alone we are now discussing. It is quite 
evident that anybody who speaks or writes lays 
more stress on those portions which he thinks 
harder for his hearers and readers to grasp, or more 
useful to be told. But he who thinks, i.e. speaks 
with himself, pays attention to all portions without 
preferences and without omissions. We are now 
concerned with thought, that is with the growth of 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 177 

science ; not with the manner of communicating it. 
And in thought, we cannot admit arbitrary judg- 
ments. 

Nor need we be turned aside by an analogy with 
the classes of facts, made by zoology and other 
natural sciences. The classifications of zoology and 
botany are not scientific operations, but merely 
views in perspective ; and, considered in relation to 
really scientific knowledge, they are arbitrary. He 
who investigates the nature of economic data, does 
not, however, aim at putting together, in perspect- 
ive and roughly, groups of economic cases, as the 
zoologist or the botanist do, mutilating and mani- 
pulating the inexhaustible, infinite varieties of living 
creatures. 

Upon the confusion between a science and the 
exposition of a science is based also the belief that we 
can follow different paths in order to arrive at a 
demonstration of the same truth. Unless in your 
case, since you are a mathematician, it arose from 
a false analogy with calculation. Now, calculation 
is not a science, because it does not give us the 
reasons of things ; and hence mathematical logic is 
logic in a manner of speaking, a variety of formal 
logic, and has nothing to do with scientific or in- 
ventive logic. 

When we pass to the question of the postulates, 
you will certainly be surprised if I tell you that the 
disagreement between us consists in your wish to 
introduce a metaphysical postulate into economic 
science ; whereas 1 wish here to rule out every 



1 78 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

metaphysical postulate and to confine myself en- 
tirely to the analysis of the given facts. The accusa- 
tion of being metaphysical will seem to you the last 
fthat could ever be brought against you. Your im- 
plied metaphysical postulate is, however, this ; that 
the facts of man's activity are of the same nature 
as physical facts ; that in the one case as in the 
other we can only observe regularity and deduce 
consequences therefrom, without ever penetrating 
into the inner nature of the facts ; that these facts 
are all alike phenomena (meaning that they would 
presuppose a noumena, which evades us, and of 
which they are manifestations). Hence whereas I 
have called my essay c On the economic principle^ 
yours is entitled c On the economic phenomenon. 1 

How could you defend this postulate of yours 
except by a metaphysical monism ; for example that 
of Spencer ? But, whilst Spencer was anti-meta- 
physical and positivist in words, I claim the ne- 
cessity of being so in deeds ; and hence I cannot 
accept either his metaphysics or his monism, and I 
hold to experience. This testifies to me the funda- 
mental distinction between external and internal, 
between physical and mental, between mechanics 
and teleology, between passivity and activity, and 
secondary distinctions involved in this fundamental 
one. What metaphysics unites philosophy distin- 
guishes (and joins together) ; the abstract contem- 
plation of unity is the death of philosophy. Let us 
confine ourselves to the distinction between physi- 
cal and mental. Whilst the external facts of nature, 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 179 

admitted by empirical physical science, are always 
phenomena, since their source is by definition out- 
side themselves, the internal facts or activities of 
man, cannot be called phenomena, since they are 
their own source. 

By this appeal to experience and by this rejec- 
tion of all metaphysical intrusion, I place myself 
in a position to meet the objection which you bring 
forward to my conception of economic data. You 
think that the ambiguity of the term value comes 
from this, that it denotes a very complex fact, a 
collection of facts included under a single word. 
For me, on the contrary, the difficulty in it arises 
from its denoting a very simple fact, a summum 
genus , i.e. the fact of the very activity of man. 
Activity is value. For us nothing is valuable except 
what is an effort of imagination, of thought, of 
will, of our activity in any of its forms. As Kant 
said that there was nothing in the universe that could 
be called good except the good will ; so, if we general- 
ise, it may be said that there is nothing in the uni- 
verse that is valuable, except the value of human 
activity. Of value as of activity you cannot demand 
a so-called genetic definition. The simple and the 
original is genetically indefinable. Value is observed 
immediately in ourselves, in our consciousness. 1 

1 I have before me Professor A. Graziadei's article lntorno 
alia teoria edonistica del valore. (In Riforma Sociale, September 
15th, 1900) ; in which A. fails to see how the purist theory 
of value dovetails in with the doctrines of Psychophysics and 
Psychology. I can well believe it ! Psychophysics and Psychology 
are natural sciences and cannot throw light on economic fact 



180 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

This observation shows us also that the summum 
genus c value,' or * mental activity' gives place to 
irreducible forms, which are in the first instance 
those of theoretical activity and practical activity, 
of theoretical values and practical values. But what 
does practical mean ? — you now ask me. I believe 
that I have already answered by explaining that 
the theoretical is everything which is a work of 
contemplation, and the practical everything that is 
the work of will. Is will an obscure term ? We may 
rather call the terms light, warmth and so on, 
obscure ; not that of will. What will is, I know 
well. I find myself face to face with it throughout 
my life as a man. Even in writing this letter, to- 
day, in a room in an inn, and in shaking off the 
laziness of country life, I have willed ; and if I have 
delayed the answer for two months, it is because 
I have been so feeble as not to know how to will. 

You see from this that the question raised by 
me, whether by choice you meant conscious or un- 
conscious choice, is not a careless question. It is 
equivalent to this other one ; whether the economic 
fact is or is not a fact of will. c This does not alter 

which is mental and of value. I may be allowed to point out, 
that, even three years ago, I gave a warning against the confu- 
sion of economics with psychology. (See in this volume pp. 72- 
75.) He who appeals to psychology (naturalistic) in order to 
understand economic fact, will always meet with the delusion, 
opportunely shown up by Graziadei. I have stated the reasons 
owing to which economics cannot dwell where the psychologists 
and hedonists say ; now Graziedei has questioned the door- 
keepers (Fechner, Wundt, etc.), and has learnt that it does not 
dwell there. Well and good ! 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 181 

the fact of the choice,' you say. But indeed it does 
alter it ! If we speak of conscious choice, we have 
before us a mental fact, if of unconscious choice, a 
natural fact ; and the laws of the former are not 
those of the latter. I welcome your discovery that 
economic fact is the fact of choice ; but I am forced 
to mean by choice, voluntary choice. Otherwise we 
should end by talking not only of the choices of a 
man who is asleep (when he moves from side to side) 
but of those of animals, and why not ? of plants and 
why not again ? of minerals ; passing rapidly along 
the steep slope down which my friend Professor C. 
Trivero has slipped in his recently published Teoria 
dei bisogni, for which may he be forgiven ! x 

1 Camillo Trivero, La teoria dei bisogni, Turin, Bocca, 
1900, pp. 198. Trivero means by need' the condition of a being, 
either conscious or unconscious (man, animal, plant, thing), in 
which it cannot remain ' : so that it can be said ' that all needs 
are ultimately condensed into the supreme need or end of being 
or becoming.' Need for him is hence actual reality itself. But 
since, on the other hand, he declares that he does not wish to- 
solve nor even to consider the philosophical problem, it is hard 
to understand what a theory of needs {i.e. of reality) can be, and 
for what reason he goes back to such generalities. 

It is true that Trivero believes that, by going back to the 
general concept of need, he can establish the parent theory on 
which rest the particular doctrines of needs ; and amongst them 
economics, which concerns itself with economic needs. If there are 
species — he says — we ought to determine of what genus they are 
species. But he will allow me to remark that the genus to look 
for is, as logic teaches, the proximate genus. To jump to such a 
great distance as to reality or to fact, would only lead to the 
noble discovery : that economic needs are part of reality, are a 
group of facts. 

And what he does is to make an equally valuable discovery : 
that the true theory of history is the theory of needs, which,. 



1 82 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

When I defined economic data as ' the practical 
activities of man, in so far as they are considered 
as such, independently of any moral or immoral 
determination,' I did not make an arbitrary judg- 
ment, which might authorise others to do likewise, 
in a science which does not tolerate arbitrary 
judgments ; but I merely distinguished further with- 
in the species practical activity, two sub-species or 
grades : pure practical activity, (economic), and 
moral practical activity, (ethical) ; will that is merely 
economic, and moral will. There is ambiguity in 
your reproach that when I speak of approval or 
disapproval as aroused by economic activity, I am 

granted his definition of needs, is as much as to say that history 
is history of reality and the theory of it is — the theory. 

I have then no objection to make to the meaning which 
Trivero wishes to give to the word need ; but I must assert that, 
having given it this meaning, he has not afterwards constructed 
the theory of anything, nor thrown light on any special group 
of facts. 

For real economic theory his book is quite useless. Economists 
do not recognise the needs of things and plants and animals, 
but only human needs, or those of man in so far as he is homo 
oeconomicus and hence a conscious being. I too believe that it is 
right to work out philosophically the principle of economics ; 
but in order to do this, Trivero should have studied economic 
science. He declares that * he does not want to hold fast to any- 
one's petticoats.' This statement is superfluous if it means that 
each individual ought to base his own scientific convictions on 
reason and not on authority. It is dangerous if it signifies, on 
the contrary, an intention to spare himself the trouble of study- 
ing other people's books, and of reconstructing everything from 
the beginning by his own personal efforts and by the aid of 
general culture alone. The result obtained — being far from 
satisfactory — should deter the author (who will not grumble at 
my plain speaking), from returning to this unfruitful method 
in the future. 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 183 

considering the matter from a synthetic instead of an 
analytic point of view, and that approval or dis- 
approval are extraneous factors. I did not however 
speak (and I believed that 1 had explained myself 
clearly), of moral, intellectual or esthetic approval or 
disapproval No, I said, and I repeat, that a judg- 
ment of approval or reprobation was necessarily 
bound up with economic activity : but a merely 
economic judgment of approval or reprobation. c By 
saying that Rhenish wine is useful to me, has a value 
for me, is ofelimo to me, I mean only to say that I 
like it ; and I do not see how this simplest of 
relations can be well or ill-managed/ You will 
forgive me if in this sentence of yours I have 
italicised the words by saying. Here is the point. 
Certainly the mere saying does not give rise to an 
internal judgment of economic approval or dis- 
approval. It will give rise to a grammatical or 
linguistic, i.e. aesthetic, approval or disapproval, 
according to whether the saying is clear or confused,, 
well or ill expressed. But it is no question of 'saying : 
it is a question of doing, i.e. of the action willed 
carried out by the movement that is willed, of a 
choice of movement. And do you think that the 
acquisition and consumption of a bottle of Rhenish 
wine involves no judgment of approval or dis- 
approval ? If I am very rich, if my aim in life is to 
obtain momentary sensual pleasures, and I know 
that Rhenish wine will secure me one of them, I 
buy and drink Rhenish wine and approve my act. 
I am satisfied with myself. But if I do not wish to 



1 84 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

indulge in gluttony, and if my money is all 
devoted to other purposes, for which 1 wish as pre- 
ferable, and if, in spite of this, yielding to the 
temptation of the moment, I buy and drink Rhenish 
wine, I have put myself into contradiction with 
myself, and the sensual pleasure will be followed 
by a judgment of disapproval, by a legitimate and 

fitting ECONOMIC REMORSE. 

To prove to you how, in all this, I omit every 
moral consideration, I will give you another ex- 
ample : that of a knave who thinks it ofelimo to 
himself to murder a man in order to rob him of a 
sum of money. At the moment of assassination, 
and although remaining a knave at heart, he yields 
to an emotion of fear or to a pathological feeling 
of compassion, and does not kill the man. Note 
carefully the terms of the hypothesis. The knave 
will call himself an ass and an imbecile, and will 
feel remorse for his contradictory and inconclusive 
conduct ; but not indeed a moral remorse (of that 
he is, by hypothesis, incapable), but, precisely, a 
remorse that is merely economic. 

It seems to me that there is another confusion, 
easy to dispel, in your counter criticism to my 
criticism of the scale of values (economic) you say 
that c there is no need for one person to find him- 
self at the same moment under different conditions ; 
it is enough that he can picture to himself these diff- 
erent conditions.' Can you in truth picture yourself 
being at the same moment under different conditions ? 
Fancy has its laws ; and does not allow the imagina- 



ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 185 

tion of what is unimaginable. You can easily say 
that you picture it to yourself : words are docile \ 
but, to picture it in reality^ is, pardon me, another 
matter altogether. You will not succeed in it any 
more than I. Ask me to imagine a lion with the 
head of a donkey, and I will comply at once ; but 
ask me to imagine a lion standing at the same 
moment in two different places, and I cannot succeed. 
I will picture to myself, if you like, two similar 
lions, two exactly alike, but not the same in two 
different positions. Fancy reconstructs reality, but 
possible reality, not the impossible or what is con- 
tradictory. Thus my demonstration of the absurdity 
of the scale of values applies both to actual and to 
possible reality. Nay, in discussing science in the 
abstract it was framed precisely on the mere con- 
sideration of the possible. 

I do not know whether I have answered all your 
objections, but I have endeavoured to answer all 
those which seem to me fundamental, k. dispute, 
in which questions of method and of principle are 
at stake need not be carried on pedantically into 
minute details ; we must depend to some extent 
on the assistance of the readers, who, putting them- 
selves mentally in the position of the two disputants, 
work out for themselves the final application. I 
wish merely to add that it is my strongest con- 
viction that the reaction against metaphysics (a far- 
sighted reaction in that it has freed scientific pro- 
cedure from admixture with the arbitrary judgments 
of feeling and belief) has been pushed forward by 



1 86 ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE 

many so far as to destroy science itself. The mathe- 
maticians who have a quick feeling for scientific 
procedure, have done much for economic science 
by reviving in it the dignity of abstract analysis, 
darkened and overwhelmed by the mass of anec- 
dotes of the historical school. But, as it happens, 
they have also introduced into it the prejudice of 
their profession, and, being themselves students 
of the general conditions of the physical world, the 
particular prejudice that mathematics can take up 
in relation to economics — which is the science of 
man^ of a form of the conscious activity of man — 
the same attitude which it rightly takes up in re- 
lation to the empirical natural sciences. 

From what I have now stated you will easily 
discover exactly how far we are in agreement in 
the establishment of the principles of Economies 
and how far we disagree. If my new observations 
should assist in further reducing the extent of the 
disagreement, I shall indeed be glad. 

Perugia, loth October^ I900. x 

1 Paretq answers this second letter in the Giornak degli econo- 
mist!, February, 1901, pp. 1 31-138. 



INDEX OF NAMES * 



Aristotle, 18 
Aveling, E., 66 * 

Bauer, B., 102 
Bernstein, E., 119 
Bertolini, A., 96 
Bohm-Bawerk, 54, 76,* 142 
Bray, 103 

COLATTI, F., I I 5 * 

Croce, B., 129,* 131,* 

Duhring, E., 69, 79,* 84, 103, 

114 
Durckheim, E., 1 18 

Ehrenfels, Christian Von, 

168, 172 
Engels, F., 7, 11, 14, 18, 19 



Hegel, G. F., 6, 11, 81-82, 

102, 122, 130 
Heine, H,, 130 
Helvetius, 8 
Herbart, 24, 25 
Holbach, g 

Kant,E., 24, 25,43, 1 1 3-1 14, 

179 
Kantsky, K., 119, 137 

Ingram, 95 * 

Jevons, 72 

Labriola, Antonio, i, 5, 9, 10- 
15, 18, 21-26, 51,* 55, 76, 
84,* 86-93, 106, 109,* no, 
4, 119, 120-132 



Igv-lO, * ., /, -»J -T7 "» «" » > 7 ■" 

25, 26, 28, 41, 55, 63, 6j, Lange, A. F., 8, 41, 71, 72* 
69, 78-81, 83, 84, 89, 95,* Leibnitz, 160 



103 



[6, 124, 131 * Loria, A., 49, 91, 138, 14 2 



Fechner, I80 
Ferrara, F., 127 



Machiavelli, N., no,* 118 
Manzoni, A., 19 
Mommsen, T., 122 
Gentile, G., 80,* 83,* 86,* Morgan, 89 

104,* 1 1 5 * More, Thomas, 1 9 * 

Gray, A., 103 

Graziadei, A., 13 8- 140, 179 * Pantaleoni, M., 76,* 96, 127, 
Grosse, E., 90* 17 1 

* Marx's name is omitted. The Asterisks indicate notes. 

187 



i88 



INDEX 



Parrto, V., 74, 76* 96-101, Smith, A., 74* 

1 59-1 86 Sombart, W., 54,* 55, 60, 63, 
Plechanov, G., 8 131,* 142 

Proudhon, P. G., 103 Sorel, G., 55, 86,* 119, 131- 

138 
Rabelais, 105 Spencer, H., 36, 178 

Ricardo, D., 53, 135, 156, Stammler, R., 27-47, 11 8, 

.157* 
Ricca, Salermo G., 77 * 
Richter, G. P., 18 
Rodbertus, K., 103 * 



Rosmini, 102 
Riimalin, 36 

Sanctis (de), F., no* 
Schiller, 25 * 
Schmidt, C., 54 
Schopenhauer, A., 102 
Simmel, G., 5, 24, 118, 



Stein, L., 1 



37,* 138, 170 
n, L., 18 
Stern, G., 133 

Trivero, C, 181,* 182 

VlLLARI, P., I IO* 



Wagner, A., 73 * 
Westermarck, E., 90* 
Witte, 78 
Wundt, 180* 



EDINBURGH; J. C. THOMSON 
AT THE MBRCAT PRESS 



• •5 






